La Ferté-Imbault Castle
The Château de La Ferté-Imbault (Loir-et-Cher) is a stately home in the Loire Valley, France. A fortress in the Middle Ages and rebuilt in the Renaissance, it is the largest brick castle in Sologne, and one of the oldest. It was the family seat of the House of d'Estampes for four centuries.
The seigneurie (Lordship) of La Ferte-Imbault was the most important of the south of Sologne, and whose jurisdiction included the parishes of Salbris, Saint-Genou (now Selles-Saint-Denis), Marcilly, Loreux and Souesmes. It comprised more than one hundred farms spread over thousands of hectares, stretching from Loreux to Souesmes and from Saint-Viâtre to the limits of Theillay.
The castle is a "rectangular building, with large windows and flanked by four towers of massifs and alleys of trees, an air of grandeur and poetry that strikes, everything at the same time, the heart and the imagination".(François Coillard) Its position "is quite pleasant and joyful, in a place where the Sauldre is divided into several channels ... The red turrets of the castle expand amid these waters and this greenery, and crown wonderfully the rich picture".(Louis de La Saussaye).
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