Coeuvres-et-Valsery, Picardie 02600

Chteau de Coeuvres-Valsery - Meeting place of Henri Iv and Gabrielle d'Estres in 1590 - Original and dreamlike Renaissance mannerist castle, built for the Dukes of Estres in the middle of the 16th century, completed around 1575. Henri Iv met Gabrielle d'Estres there in 1590, the date of the beginning of their romantic and tumultuous affair. 6 hectares. To be completely restored. Villers-Cotterets, Picardy, Aisne, Hauts-de-France. Although it looks like a fortress, it is a pleasure chateau, and more precisely a party castle, given the off-centre plan characterized by an off-centre and small main building, the presence of four imposing pavilions and a possible large gallery disappeared to the south-west. The ambitious Estres family, which included a French ambassador in Rome, had a festive and worldly reputation, close to the royal family Coeuvres-Valsery will be erected as a marquisate then as a duchy-peerage for her. Of this ambitious complex built in the second half of the 16th century, close to the royal achievements, there remain only vestiges resulting from the demolitions of the Revolution and the bombardment of 1918 while the restoration initiated at the end of the 19th century had just been completed. Finish. The environment, curiously implanted on a swamp confirms a baroque choice, which can find its explanation in the mannerism, current of thought and artistic of the XVIth century having a taste for the strange, the curious, the bizarre, the original sometimes going to extremes of incongruity and bad taste. Architecture, A square plan, marked by large dry moats spanned by bridges on two sides, confined by slightly projecting square corner pavilions. The architecture is made of beautiful limestone stonework, the walls of the moat are slightly sloped. The most remarkable element is the so-called Henri Iv pavilion to the west, square in plan topped with a large four-sided roof, attached to a square stair tower topped with a dome on the side a low wing. The windows are mullioned and transom, skylights with arched pediment. Beautiful moldings on the facades, windows with bands. Inside this pavilion, a large room adorned with a neo-Renaissance fireplace, black and white floor, ceiling with beams and joists decorated with paintings and crests, low panelling. Two other rooms. A stone spiral staircase. Upstairs, a large room without any decor, two other rooms. A great peak. On the south-east side, a superb cryptoporticus on which the wooden gallery may have stood, it includes a series of vaulted rooms, in particular the large kitchens with their superb stereotomy. Beautiful stone slab floors. A second basement level houses flooded galleries. Remains of the stairway pavilion with two semicircular bays, straight staircase with banister under a semicircular vault. To the North-East, outbuildings, largely rebuilt after the First World War, in the centre, a porch house topped with a four-sided roof, attached to a staircase turret topped with a dome. Inside, a few rare original elements, a stone spiral staircase, a neo-Renaissance fireplace. Nice volume on the first floor of the porch. Character : Gabrielle d'Estrees. Born in Coeuvres-Valsery in 1573, died in Paris in 1599. A woman with a tumultuous life, whose mother was already described as frivolous, the siblings of seven sisters were called the seven deadly sins by Madame de Svign, the father saying that Coeuvres-Valsery was a hutch for whores. The family having great social ambitions, it already cumulated important charges and functions, Gabrielle met King Henri Iv at Coeuvres-Valsery in 1590, through her lover. The King courted her ardently, returning especially to Coeuvres-Valsery, after six months, she yielded. He wanted to marry her, even going so far as to announce their marriage in public at a party at the Louvre on February 23, 1599 she died shortly after April 10, 1599 while carrying the child she had had with Henry Iv, certainly as a result of her pregnancy, although s