Exploring Château Marouatte: Through Another Door

 Exploring Château Marouatte: Through Another Door

Part 6

My wandering around Château Marouatte continued, and once again I found that the closer I looked, the more the château changed. From a distance it is towers, walls and battlements. Up close, it becomes flowers, worn stone, curious objects, sheltered passageways and doors that seem to invite you to see what is on the other side.

The history helps explain why the château feels so layered. Marouatte was largely dismantled during the French Revolution and even used as a source of building stone. It was subsequently reconstructed and restored, particularly from the late nineteenth century onward. The commune describes today’s complex as two polygonal enclosures, with the inner enclosure surrounding the château and its cylindrical towers. 

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I began with another wonderful collision of old and new.

Against the château wall, a keypad sits among potted plants and flowering oleander. The oleander’s narrow leaves and brilliant pink blossoms bring a distinctly southern feeling to all the gray stone.

I keep finding these little combinations here. Ancient walls and modern security. Terracotta pots and drainpipes. Flowers growing beside centuries-old masonry.

Nothing is staged. It is simply how an old château continues to function.

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Looking upward again, the massive scale of the building becomes apparent.

The wall rises almost uninterrupted toward the crenellated roofline, with enormous stone corbels projecting beneath the parapet. Narrow windows interrupt the otherwise formidable surface.

There is even what appears to be a bell mounted high on the wall, with a long cord descending toward the ground.

This is one of those photographs where the vegetation becomes important too. A huge mass of climbing greenery has been trained along the lower wall, softening what would otherwise be an imposing vertical plane of stone.

Historical descriptions identify the northern residential building as being accompanied by a polygonal tower crowned with machicolations. The château’s fortifications were not simply decorative. Archaeological research has documented gun openings in one of Marouatte’s enclosure towers dating from the era when firearms were changing castle defenses. 

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Then I went inside again.

Immediately the light changed.

Broad stone steps curve upward through a passage of rough limestone walls. At the landing stands a painted figure on a pedestal, illuminated by the warm light from a nearby window.

I particularly like this photograph because the staircase does not look perfectly uniform. The steps widen, narrow and turn as they climb.

Modern staircases tell you exactly where you are going.

Old château staircases seem to say, follow me and find out.

So, naturally, I did.

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Back outside, another quiet corner stopped me.

A dark robed female figure stands beside a planter overflowing with white flowers. Above her, branches laden with orange berries stretch across the wall.

Beneath everything is a remarkable piece of carved stonework decorated with faces inside circular medallions.

There is no single grand object here demanding attention. Instead, the photograph is built from layers: sculpture, flowers, berries, carved faces, greenery and weathered wall.

It is exactly the sort of corner that rewards wandering without a destination.

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And then I looked down again.

After photographing the small plants growing throughout the château grounds earlier, I was beginning to recognize just how determined vegetation can be here.

Even the gravel is becoming a garden.

Several different low-growing plants have established themselves among the stones, along with grasses and a larger rosette-forming plant. I would hesitate to assign exact species from this photograph alone, but what interests me more is where they are growing.

Nobody planted a formal border here.

Seeds arrived.

Rain came.

A little soil collected between the gravel.

And a garden began.

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Around another corner, I found one of my favorite architectural spaces of this walk.

Heavy stone columns support broad arches. Inside, ribbed vaults rise overhead. Against the back wall sits a long, dark carved wooden bench, while above it hangs a blue-and-white decorative tile panel.

Fragments of carved stone rest along the walls.

This is not merely an architectural impression. The municipality’s history of Marouatte specifically describes a gallery linking two buildings above an arcade with ribbed vaulting. It also notes that the southern building contained the chapel and kitchen. 

Suddenly the pieces I had been photographing began to make more sense.

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Stepping back reveals how this vaulted gallery connects to another remarkable entrance.

The doorway is framed by a pointed, almost flame-shaped Gothic arch. Beyond it is darkness.

The enormous column beside it seems almost too substantial for the delicate tracery of the doorway. Above, walls, windows and another tower stack upward.

The paving underfoot is just as interesting. Cut stone slabs meet borders of rounded cobbles, and in the center is an irregular inset of larger river stones.

Nothing is visually uniform.

That is precisely why I like it.

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Then I noticed the tree.

Someone has transformed this sheltered corner into a tiny outdoor retreat. Hanging among its branches are large bulbs, a wind chime, a small lantern and a long spiral of little bells.

Below is an ornamental urn surrounded by a thick carpet of groundcover.

Beside the doorway stands another small robed figure.

This is the château at its most intimate. Not the architecture that announces itself from across the valley, but the little things someone has added because people actually spend time here.

I imagine this corner sounds entirely different when the wind begins moving through those chimes and bells.

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And then I found this wonderful little window.

Set into the old stone is a stained-glass figure that appears to depict a medieval knight or armored figure, complete with helmet and shield.

From only a few feet away, it would be easy to miss.

That has become something of a theme during my exploration. Château Marouatte does not reveal everything at once.

Look at the tower.

Then look at the window.

Then look inside the window.

There is always another photograph.

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Finally, I came around to another side of the fortifications.

Here the château feels different again.

The gravel path curves gently toward a dark wooden door. Above it rises a slender cylindrical turret capped by a rounded stone dome. Behind and beside it are massive walls, projecting defensive stonework and the remains of the enclosure.

The trees almost swallow portions of the architecture.

Historical accounts describe the inner enclosure as having four cylindrical corner towers and enclosing the château proper, which consisted of two residential buildings, a keep and chapel. 

And there, beneath all that history, is simply another door.

That may be what I have enjoyed most about exploring Marouatte.

There is no single view that explains it.

The grand photographs show a château.

The close photographs show a place that has accumulated centuries of human choices. Someone carved the stone. Someone built the vault. Someone installed stained glass. Someone planted flowers. Someone hung bells from a tree. Someone added a keypad to a wall that existed long before anyone could have imagined such a thing.

And somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to photograph the château.

I started photographing all the little things that make the château what it is.