The Château and estate of Courances and its superb gardens

Want to go green and enjoy a walk to discover France's beautiful heritage? Let's discover the Château de Courances and its park with 14 springs and 17 water features. Located in theEssonne region near Fontainebleau and Milly-la-Forêt, 47 kilometers and less than an hour from Paris, Courances is considered one of the most beautiful gardens in France.

On arrival, you can opt either to explore the gardens on their own (€7 to €9) or to purchase a combined ticket for the château (€12), which includes a guided tour of the historic building still inhabited by the de Ganay family.

Listed as a historic monument, the Château de Courances and its grounds are a sight to behold! Built under the reign of Louis XIII, the Château de Courances has undergone many transformations over the centuries. Take advantage of our guided tour to learn more about the building's evolution over the centuries.

In 1552, Côme de Clausse became the owner of the estate, which had previously been a manor house. It was his family who laid out the landscapingand waterworks. It has to be said that we're also in the Gâtinais, an area notorious for being marshy, and Courances, as you'd expect, lives up to its name. To create the park, Cosme, followed by his son Pierre, Grand Master of Water and Forests, acquired additional land. Their size enabled them to control the École river and some of the fourteen springs that give the park its character.

Later, in the 18th century, Anne-Catherine Gallard, widow of Nicolas Potier de Novion, added symmetry to the gardens and water features. With the 600-metre Grand Canal that inspired Fontainebleau, the Salle d'Eaux and its 14 gueulards (water spitters), the Miroir d'Eau (water mirror on which the château is reflected), the water steps and La Gerbe (a 10-sided basin that today lacks its central water jet), there's no shortage of basins.

• To be read
• Tips for the week of November 18 to 24, 2024 in Paris: free or inexpensive outings
• Free museums and monuments: places to visit this Sunday, December 1, 2024 in Paris
• Free Museums and Monuments to visit in Paris and the Ile-de-France region, good ideas for outings

The château was then abandoned for forty years, even allowing a tree to grow through the roof. In 1872, it was bought by Samuel de Haber, a Berlin banker and baron, who entrusted Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur with the restoration of the château in the Louis XIII style. A descendant of the family, Jean-Louis de Ganay, the current owner, redesigned the park and its water features to simplify maintenance. Large lawns replaced the gravel paths, giving even more space to nature.

So, as you've heard, the château's gardens are among the most beautiful in France. Perhaps it was here that the idea of the French garden, of the classical park, was born. Although Courances has long been attributed to Le Nôtre, it was in fact the landscape gardeners Henri and Achille Duchêne, at the beginning of the 20th century, who gave it its full classical dimension. From the 16th to the 21st century, time has not stood still: Courances is a historical and contemporary creation spanning more than five centuries. Through the spirit of Le Nôtre, the classicism of the Duchêne family and the intervention of current owner Jean-Louis de Ganay, this Renaissance garden has become a garden of the 21st century.

Within the Parc de Courances, it's a reserved domain, an island carried by the green ocean of smooth parterres inherited from the Grand Siècle. There are no straight mirrors of water, no ribbons of canal stretching as far as the eye can see, no perspectives, no green carpets... Here, the focus is on botanical collections, color effects and foliage. In this poetic garden, which appears like a mirage and looks like a painting, a feminine fantasy reigns, stemming from a British
gardening tradition.

This is an Anglo-Japanese garden. Indeed, some elements of a true Japanese garden are missing, but the use of certain species and methods of pruning and arrangement specific to the Japanese garden are there, such as the typical cloud pruning.

This rather recent garden was created in the 1930s by the current owner's grandmother, Berthe de Ganay. With the help of Kitty Lloyd-Jones (a pupil of Gertrude Jekyll, who invented the principle of the English "mixed-border" - beds of flowering plants set against a hedge), she created a setting where Japanese maples, purple beeches, tulips and hyacinths delight us with their colors all year round, both in spring and in autumn, when the maples blaze.

Then it's off to La Foulerie, the tea room where hemp was once trodden in the 17th century, for a feast for the eyes and a gourmet break with a view. With its terrace offering a breathtaking view of the Japanese garden, it's the ideal spot for an afternoon tea with a change of scenery.

In short, this park and its Louis XIII château are well worth a visit. Fancy a stroll this weekend?