Château de Fléchères, Renaissance castle in Fareins, France

Château de Fléchères is a 17th-century residence built between 1610 and 1616 on a moated feudal mound in Fareins. Its plan retains four square corner towers and a stone bridge over deep moats, leading to a central logis with a Baroque entrance and seven windows on each of two floors, flanked by perpendicular wings. A French-style garden once opened to the south with a basin and monumental fountain.

Fléchères succeeded a 12th-century fortified house that guarded a ford on the Saône. Jean de Sève, receiver of finances in the Lyon generality, acquired the barony in 1606 and built the present castle in a single campaign between 1610 and 1616. A 1793 fire damaged the outbuildings' roofs, furniture and archives. The castle passed by marriage to the Artaud de la Ferrière family, who held it from 1829 to 1970.

Pietro Ricchi decorated the interior with extensive frescoes in 1632, creating the largest collection of early 17th-century Italian paintings in France. The wall paintings tell stories from ancient times and mythology that continue to shape the rooms today.

The site is open to visitors during scheduled hours, and the gardens and interior rooms can be explored during guided tours. Comfortable shoes are recommended since the grounds are extensive and multiple levels of the castle are accessible on foot.

The central body of the main building holds a Protestant temple of 250 square metres, built because the Edict of Nantes of 1598 allowed Reformed worship only in seigneuries of high justice. Jean de Sève, who founded the present castle between 1610 and 1616, held Fléchères as a barony in full justice, which made the room possible. It sits in the central block, not on an upper floor.