I picked up a thick brochure on a tourist stand of all the principal sites to visit in the Saintonge area of Charente-Maritime outside La Rochelle. I felt like a child in a candy store going through the brochure’s pages, especially when I calculated how close we were to the chateaus, convents, monasteries, and churches I wanted to visit.
The first place we ventured out to was the Château de la
Roche Courbon with its famous garden and park.
The château was built in 1475 by Jehan de la Tour and modified by the
Courbon family in the seventeenth century.
The famous garden and park were created by Jean-Baptiste de la Quintinie
(1626 – 1688) in the second part of the seventeenth century under the direction
of Jean-Louis de Courbon.
The first thing we learned on a guided tour we took and in a
temporary exhibit was that a French-style garden is characterized by three
elements: symmetry, geometry, and perspective.
La Quintinie used all three elements of a French-style garden at Roche
Courbon.
Jean-Baptiste de la Quintinie also worked with landscape
designer André le Nôtre (1613 – 1700) at the château of Vaux-le-Vicomte. Both men later worked at Versailles, where La
Quintinie was put in charge of the royal kitchen gardens and orchards to provide
fruit and vegetables for King Louis XIV (1638 – 1715).
Since 2000, the garden at the Château de la Roche Courbon has
been built on wooden pilotis, or piles, due to its sinking into a marsh. As long as the wood is submerged in water it
does not rot. The château itself sits on
a rock.
Inside the château, the upper class servants’ room was most
interesting. The beds were short, not
because everyone was short. Rather,
people slept sitting up as lying down resembled death. Several people slept in a bed with a curtain
pulled around the bed for warmth.
At the château’s exit, there were several games for royal
and aristocratic young people set up for visitors to compete with each
other. The games featured strategy and
dexterity to win. One game called
Billard à balles required rolling a ball up an incline on two rods that you
moved together.
Another royal and aristocratic game called Bâtonnets shows
up on France’s Fort Boyard television show.
In this game, you can draw one, two, or three sticks with the objective
of leaving your adversary with one stick.
There are twenty sticks on the board; counting helps with the strategy
for winning this game.
By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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| Laurent Paget Photography |
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| Laurent Paget Photography |
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| Laurent Paget Photography |
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| Ruth Paget Selfie |
