A Moated Crown of Normandy: Louis XI’s 15th-Century Castle

The drawbridge lowers with a whisper, its timbers groaning softly as they settle over the glassy moat where black swans glide—regal sentinels of a kingdom frozen in time. This is no ordinary estate, but a fortress of legend, its stone walls rising from the Normandy earth as they have since 1437, when the hands of master masons shaped it for Louis XI himself. A crown of turrets catches the golden light, their shadows stretching across 27 acres of whispering meadows, silver-birch groves, and a river that winds like a ribbon through the land, its 800 meters of private waters teeming with the promise of quiet afternoons spent with rod in hand.

Step through the arched entrance, where an 18th-century copper pot—its surface warmed by centuries of hearth fires—rests in the hall like a relic of grand feasts past. The air hums with the scent of aged oak and beeswax, of stone that has borne the footsteps of dukes and the murmurs of courtly intrigue. A spiral staircase, worn smooth by time, coils upward to luxury chambers where fireplaces crackle in winter and ‘money room’ doors hint at secrets once kept by nobility. Nine bedrooms, each a sanctuary of refined comfort, unfold across 450 square meters of fortified elegance—original floor tiles, cool beneath bare feet, lead to bathrooms where modern indulgence meets medieval grandeur.

Beyond the castle’s embrace, the land unfurls in generous splendor: paddocks rolling toward the horizon, a mirror-still pond reflecting the Normandy sky, and outbuildings that beckon with possibility—a barn’s vaulted ceilings begging for transformation, a garage and workshop humming with potential, an apartment waiting to cradle guests in its quiet charm. The river, a liquid silver thread, offers not just beauty but privilege, its fishing rights a rare jewel in this crown of an estate.

Here, history is not a distant echo but a living breath—felt in the morning mist curling over the moat, in the way sunlight slants through arrow-slit windows to paint the walls in amber. It is a place for those who seek more than a home: a legacy. Whether as a family’s ancestral seat, where children’s laughter mingles with the ghosts of kings, or as a *chambres d’hôtes* where travelers come to touch the past, this castle is a canvas for dreams as vast as its 11 hectares of land.

Normandy’s gentle hills cradle it, St. Lô’s quiet dignity guards it, and now—after six centuries of stories—it waits for its next chapter to begin.