Monuments to visit Picardie

How would you like to visit the castle of Beauty and the Beast? Then take part in the well-commented tours to learn more about the mysteries of this place where Jean Cocteau shot several scenes from his famous film with Jean Marais. A very famous haute couture brand also shot an ad there in 2018. This seventeenth century photogenic house bears witness to the passion that its first owners had for hunting. The gate of the park is surmounted by a statue of Diana, and the courtyard of the castle is framed by two porticoes representing 38 hunting dogs forcing deer and wild boar. Today, this castle houses a 10 room hotel, a beautiful restaurant overlooking a famous golf course and a clubhouse with a cosy atmosphere. Under the spell? You can privatize part of the estate for company seminars or family celebrations.

Surrounded by water, the castle is initially very photogenic outside. It was constantly enlarged and restored by its lineages of occupants: the Orgemonts, the Montmorencies, the Condés and above all the Duc d'Aumale, who endowed it with priceless collections of works of art, such as Nicolas Poussin's The Massacre of the Innocents. The Cabinet des Livres, one of the richest libraries in Europe, contains some 13,000 volumes and manuscripts. A visit to the large princely apartments and the private apartments of the Duke and Duchess of Aumale is a delight.

Located outside the medieval enclosure, they date back to the th century after Jesus Christ, when the city called Augustomagus, that is, the «Augustus market». Under the Mérovingiens, they served as a quarry of stones, from dumping to excavations in the late th century. In Gallo-Roman, its stands could hold up to 12 000 people. They disappeared, their stones being reused in the construction of the city. On the other hand, the vomitoirs, corridors that led to the stands and their floors remained visible.

A veritable autonomous fortress, located east of the fortified enclosure giving access to the castle, the building consists of two massive towers of rectangular plane forming galleries, finished in the east on the side of the attack by finger finger at right angles. These two defensive elements, stuffed the entrance passage without covering it completely, to ensure a direct defence. " The existence of finger finger, the operator apparatus of the masonry, the exposed sas shows that this door is the culmination of research carried out by the royal engineers, at the end of the th century. The door Saint-Jean takes place in the vicinity of the doors of Mortes Dead and Carcassonne, which it adopts, by improving the characters " (Jean Mesqui, Ile de France Gothic).