En un regard
Le château en bref
Château d'Alco, at 1000 rue d'Alco in Montpellier (Hérault), is a Louis XV-style Montpellier folly built around 1740 (attested in 1744) for Antoine-Samuel Bonnier, a fermier général from a family of cloth merchants who had turned to finance. Modest in size, the residence features a perron, vigorously rusticated surrounds and a false avant-corps crowned by a flattened pediment; the gardens are laid out symmetrically on two levels linked by a double-flight staircase, embellished with pools and fountains. The cour d'honneur, once announced by two entrance pavilions and flanked by wine-producing outbuildings that no longer survive, has lost these features. Owned by the Hérault departmental council, renovated between 1985 and 1989, the château now houses a restaurant for departmental councillors on the ground floor and offices on the upper floor; the gardens are open to the public. The building has never been protected as a monument historique.