Domaine de Beauregard, Historical park and château in Hérouville-Saint-Clair, France.
Domaine de Beauregard is a Troubadour-style château completed in 1864 under Martial Pelfresne, standing on a 23-hectare estate beside the Caen canal at the edge of Hérouville-Saint-Clair. Its pale yellow stone facade has a grey slate roof, a tall round turret with a conical spire on the left, a projecting bay with a curved gable at the centre, and a right-hand pavilion with tall windows and a small balcony. The grounds hold meadows, woods, an annex, a sheepfold and a farm.
The estate belonged to the fief of Colbert before Jules Lecesne, a shipowner from Le Havre, acquired it in the mid-19th century and turned it into a holiday residence. The Troubadour-style château was completed in 1864 under the direction of Martial Pelfresne. Heavily damaged in the Second World War, it was bought back by the State and used by the ORTF for summer holiday camps, then purchased by the municipality of Hérouville-Saint-Clair in 1977.
The park has hosted the Festival Beauregard every July since 2009; its first edition drew 20,000 festival-goers, with Mika, Pete Doherty, Iggy Pop & The Stooges and Phoenix among the early headliners. Before that, the estate hosted the "fêtes de la Rose" until 1988, when the association bearing the domain's name was founded.
The 23-hectare estate lies on the edge of Hérouville-Saint-Clair along the Caen-to-sea canal, with the château, its outbuildings and the wooded park grouped together. The Ornavik Viking village occupies part of the park and is open to the public. The Festival Beauregard takes over the château grounds each July.
The grounds contain Ornavik, a reconstruction of a Viking village that commemorates the Norse origins of Normandy. This unusual feature was created to bring the region's early history to life.
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