Château du Taillis, Renaissance castle in Duclair, France
Château du Taillis is a Renaissance castle in Duclair, in the Seine-Maritime department of Normandy, France. The building has a main body flanked by later pavilions, with ground-floor reception rooms including a theater, a dining hall, and a music room, and a chapel and bedrooms on the upper floor.
The castle was built around 1530 by Jehan du Fay du Tailly on the site of an older fortified house from the 13th century. In the 17th century, additional pavilions were added to the original structure, giving the building the shape it has today.
The sculpted facade carries seigniorial coats of arms, niches and pilasters. Inside, about 60 rooms include a Chinese lounge with silk paintings used for private receptions, a theatre and a music room on the ground floor, while the chapel and Regency lounge occupy the first floor.
The château stands on the right side of the Route du Trait, in the hamlet of Saint-Paul at Duclair, within a site protected since 14 June 1952 and part of the Boucles de la Seine Normande regional natural park. The house, orangery, ice house, east and west barns and surviving boundary walls are separately listed, so the grounds and outbuildings are seen alongside the main building.
The grounds contain rare tree species, including a giant Sequoia and a Virginia tulip tree, planted long before such trees were common in French gardens. The park also holds an orangery built to look like a Greco-Roman temple, an unusual combination for a property of this size.
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