En un regard
Le château en bref
The Château de Saint-Loup, in Saint-Loup-Lamairé (Deux-Sèvres), succeeds an earlier 11th-century castle built by Drogon. The 14th-century keep housed King John II the Good, taken prisoner after the Battle of Poitiers, as well as the Black Prince. Bought in 1517 by Artus Gouffier de Boisy, the estate saw the present château built between 1609 and 1626 at the initiative of Claude Gouffier, on an H-shaped plan with a central pavilion containing a grand staircase, flanked by symmetrical wings, in the Henri IV style and the emerging Louis XIII style. The estate reached its peak in the 18th century under the Boyer family, one of the three families of farmers-general (Lepage, Boyer, Haran) who succeeded one another there between 1645 and 1767, before passing to the d'Abbadie and then the Maussabré-Beufvier families. Occupied by the German army during the Second World War, it suffered damage that was repaired from 1955 onwards. Briefly owned by Jean-Jacques Debout and Chantal Goya in 1988, it has belonged since 1990 to Count Charles-Henri de Bartillat. A private property open to the public since 1998, it has been converted into bed-and-breakfast guest rooms and offers tours of its gardens.
