Château
A château is a manor house, or palace, or residence of the lord of the manor, or a fine country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally, and still most frequently, in French-speaking regions.
Nowadays, a château may be any stately residence built in a French style; the term is additionally often used for a winegrower's estate, especially in the Bordeaux region of France.
Definition
The word "château" is a French word that has entered English, where its meaning is more specific than in French. The French word château denotes buildings as diverse as a medieval fortress, a Renaissance palace, and a fine 19th-century country house. Care should therefore be taken when translating the French word château into English, noting the nature of the building in question. Most French châteaux are "palaces" or fine "country houses" rather than "castles", and for these, the word "château" is appropriate in English. Sometimes the word "palace" is more suitable. To give an outstanding example, the Château de Versailles, also called in French le palais de Versailles, is so-called because it was located in the countryside when it was built. Still, it does not resemble a castle, so it is usually known in English as the Palace of Versailles. When clarification is needed in French, the term château fort is used to describe a fortified castle, such as the Château fort de Roquetaillade.The urban counterpart of a château is a palais in French, which is usually applied only to very grand residences in a city. This usage differs from that of the term "palace" in English, where there is no requirement that a palace be in a city, whereas the word palais is rarely used for buildings other than the grandest royal residences. The term hôtel particulier is used in French for an urban "private house" of a grand sort.
Concept
A château is a "power house", as Sir John Summerson dubbed the British and Irish "stately homes" that are the British Isles' architectural counterparts to French châteaux. It is the personal badge of a family that, with some official rank, locally represents the royal authority; thus, the word château often refers to the dwelling of a member of either the French nobility or royalty. However, some fine châteaux, such as Vaux-le-Vicomte, were built by the essentially high-bourgeois—people but recently ennobled: tax-farmers and ministers of Louis XIII and his royal successors. The quality of the residences could vary considerably, from grand châteaux owned by royalty and the wealthy elite near larger towns to run-down châteaux vacated by poor nobility and officials in the countryside, isolated and vulnerable.File:Château de Versailles.jpg|thumb|left|Cour d'honneur by Louis Le Vau at Château de Versailles, subsequently copied all over Europe
A château was historically supported by its terres, composing a demesne that rendered the society of the château largely self-sufficient, in the manner of the historic Roman and early medieval villa system. The open villas of Rome in the times of Pliny the Elder, Maecenas, and Emperor Tiberius began to be walled-in, and then fortified in the 3rd century AD, thus evolving to castellar "châteaux". In modern usage, a château retains some enclosures that are distant descendants of these fortifying outworks: a fenced, gated, closeable forecourt, perhaps a gatehouse or a keeper's lodge, and supporting outbuildings. Besides the cour d'honneur entrance, the château might have an inner cour, and inside, in the private residence, the château faces a simply and discreetly enclosed park.
In the city of Paris, the Louvre and the Luxembourg Palace were initially referred to as châteaux, but became "palaces" when the city enclosed them. In other French-speaking regions of Europe, such as Wallonia, the word château is used with the same meaning as in France. In Belgium, a strong French architectural influence is evident in the seventeenth-century Château des Comtes de Marchin and the eighteenth-century Château de Seneffe.
In the United States, the word château took root selectively. In the Gilded Age resort town of Newport, Rhode Island, large manor homes were called "cottages", but north of Wilmington, Delaware, in the rich, rural "Château Country" centred upon the powerful Du Pont family, the word château is used with its original definition. In Canada, especially in English, château usually denotes a hotel, not a house, and applies only to the country's most elaborate railway hotels, built during the Canadian railroad golden age, such as the Château Lake Louise in Lake Louise, Alberta, the Château Laurier in Ottawa, the Château Montebello in Montebello, Quebec, and the Château Frontenac in Quebec City.
French châteaux—particular regions
Bordeaux region
There are many estates with true châteaux on them in the Bordeaux wine regions. Still, it is customary for any wine-producing estate since the 19th century, no matter how humble, to prefix its name with "Château". This term became the default way of designating an estate in Bordeaux, in the same way that Domaine did in Burgundy. Both Château and Domaine are aristocratic in implication, but Bordeaux had a better claim to the association: nobles had owned Bordeaux's best vineyards for centuries. Most of Burgundy's best vineyards, in contrast, had been owned by the Church. The term Château became a permanent verbal fixture in Bordeaux, and it was emulated in other French regions and outside France.The winery denomination Château is now protected by French law, and confirmed in 1981 by European Union law, as "traditional appellation". The term Château may be used only if two conditions are fulfilled:
- The wine concerned has to be made exclusively from grapes harvested from the vineyard,
- The wine-making process was carried out there.
Loire Valley