Château de La Gallée, Historic castle in Millery, France

Château de La Gallée is a multi-storey stone building with a pale, weathered facade and two tiled roof sections: a block topped by a pyramidal roof on the left and a taller tower with a pointed conical roof on the right. Regularly spaced rectangular windows, some with grey shutters, pierce the walls, with a few round openings near the top. A projecting stone stair or terrace structure rises along the lower right base, and a low stone wall runs across the foreground.

The estate began as a vine-growing house of the 14th–15th centuries, remodelled into a country house around 1546–1562, possibly on plans by Italian architect Sebastiano Serlio, a friend of the Vauzelles family who inherited it around 1512–1515. In 1630 François de Vauzelles sold it to Jean de Moulceau, secretary of Lyon, whose family added terraced gardens, a grotto and an 800-metre underground water gallery. It was listed as a monument historique on 7 June 1926.

The name La Gallée likely comes from the Millery family of Gali or Gall: in his will of 18 July 1348 Orient de Gali left a legacy to the hospice of the Croix Maladière in Millery. Around 1419 an hôtel de la Gallée stood in Lyon at the corner of rue Saint-Georges and the montée du Gourguillon, where the estate's wine was probably sold.

The estate is private and seen only from outside; a public path along the low stone wall in front gives the clearest view of the facade, its two tiled roofs and the projecting stone stair at the lower right. The building stands on a hillside slope in Millery, so the ground rises behind it.

Around 1672-1673, masons and diggers cut a capture gallery nearly 800 metres long, joining the house to the centre of Millery. Built as an underground passage, it also let the residents of La Gallée reach the village if trouble arose. In front of the house, a vaulted reservoir collected the captured water and fed it to the grotto and gardens.