Château de Chessy

English translation

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History

Castle built in 1271-1272, enlarged in the second half of the 15th century. The Wars of Religion and the neglect of the commendatory abbots ruin the castle. In the 19th century, the building is restored in the neo-gothic style. In 1971, the decorator Vital-Durand rehabilitates the buildings and redesigns a garden. The castle comprises two complexes articulated around the keep. The 13th century castle comprised a quadrangular enclosure on which various buildings rested and flanked by a cylindrical keep. This is the oldest known Lyonnais example of fortification with talus and equipped with large arrow slits, marking a new stage of defence. The two 16th century building blocks stand outside the primitive enclosure. Fittings from the 19th and 20th centuries, notably a neo-gothic reception hall with its monumental fireplace, its wainscoting, its wallpaper, its stained glass and its "medievalized" 15th century door. At the time of the Revolution, the site of the 13th century castle was already a garden. It was laid out in the 19th century as a rockery garden of which notably a small artificial grotto remains. In the 1970s, a new garden playing on vegetable masses was designed by the decorator Vital-Durand.