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A ch teau (French for castle; plural ch teaux) is a manor house or residence of the lord of the manor or a country house of gentry, usually French, with or without fortifications.
The next step down in France is a maison de campagne, a "country house" with the usual English connotations of the word. There is a distinction in French between a maison de campagne and one that is merely a maison la campagne, a "house in the country," perhaps a weekending retreat. The urban counterpart of "ch teau" is palais (palace).
The concept
If a ch teau is not old, then it must be grand. A ch teau is a "power house" as Sir John Summerson dubbed the English (and Georgian Irish) "Stately homes" that are social counterparts of ch teaux. It is the personal (and hopefully hereditary) badge of a family that represents the royal authority at some rank, locally. Thus this word is often used to refer to a residence of a member of the French royalty or the nobility, but some fine ch teaux, such as Vaux-le-Vicomte were built by the essentially high bourgeois, but recently ennobled, tax-farmers and ministers of Louis XIII and his successors.
A ch teau is supported by its lands (terres), comprising a demesne that renders the society of the ch teau largely self-sufficient, in the manner of the historic villa system of Rome and the Early Middle Ages. (Compare manorialism and hacienda.) The open Roman villas of the time of Pliny, Maecenas or emperor Tiberius began to be walled in, then fortified in the 3rd century, and evolved into castellar "ch teaux." Even in modern use a ch teau still retains some enclosures that are the distant descendants of these outworks: its fenced-off forecourt, with gates that could be closed and perhaps with a gatehouse or keeper's lodge, and its supporting outbuildings, like stables, kitchens, brewery, bakehouse, and lodgings for menservants in the gar onni re. Aside from the entrance cour d'honneur, the ch teau may have an inner cour ("court"). Beyond, on the private inner side, the ch teau faces a park that is enclosed, no matter how simply or discreetly. (If you doubt whether it is a ch teau, ask to see the chapel.)
The original ch teaux of the Louvre (originally fortified) and Luxembourg (originally in the suburbs) have lost their ch teau name and have becomes "palaces" as the growing city enclosed them.
In England, the word "ch teau" never took root: even the utterly ch teauesque Rothschild Waddesdon Manor is not a "ch teau."
In the U.S., "ch teau" took root selectively. In the Gilded Age resort of Newport, Rhode Island, even the ch teaux were always "cottages." But north of Wilmington, Delaware, in upscale rural "Ch teau Country" centred on the powerful DuPont family, some of the ch teaux are really just McMansions.
French ch teaux
Loire Valley The Loire Valley (Val de Loire) is home to more than 300 ch teaux. They were built between the 10th and 20th centuries, first by the French kings and soon followed by the nobility, which have caused the valley to be called "the Garden of France". teau of Dampierre-en-Yvelines: domesticated Baroque at the center of Louis XIV's inner circle
Dampiere-en-Yvelines (illustration, right), built by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, 1675 - 1683 for the Duc de Chevreuse, Colbert's brother-in-law, is a French Baroque chateau of manageable size. Protected behind fine wrought iron double gates, the main block and its outbuildings (corps de logis), linked by balustrades, are ranged symmetrically around a dry paved and gravelled cour d'honneur. Behind, the central axis is extended between the former parterres, now mown hay. The park with formally shaped water was laid out by Andr Le Notre. There are sumptuous interiors. The small scale (compared to Vaux-le-Vicomte for example) makes it easier to compare it to the approximately contemporary Het Loo, for William of Orange. These really are "Mansart roofs."
Bordeaux There are many estates with true ch teaux on them in Bordeaux, but it is customary for any wine-producing estate, no matter how humble, to prefix its name with teau". This is true whether the building itself is a magnificent palace or a shack. If there were any trace of doubt that the Roman villas of Aquitaine evolved into fortified self-contained ch teaux, the wine-producing ch teaux would dispel it.
See also
External links - Photos of French chateau in the Dordogne, including Biron, Beynac and Castelnau (http://www.lodgephoto.com/galleries/FR/dordogne)
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