Château d'Artigny

Having originally been constructed as a fortress around the keep of Montbazon, an advanced bastion, during the Hundred Years' War, the Château d'Artigny was incorporated into the line of defences established along the river Indre.

On a journey around Touraine he was captivated by the location but, feeling the building to be unbalanced and badly placed on the cliff overlooking the Indre, he had the château pulled down and rebuilt 12 metres further away on new foundations.

Denys Puech, the official sculptor (a receiver of the Prix de Rome) constructed an 18th-century style allegory on the tympanum of the pediment of the central front section overlooking the Indre valley.

Nothing was too fine or too luxurious: the polished stone stairway from Lens, the dining room with its marble floor from Carrare, inlaid with a variety of bronze motifs, the Regency woodwork and the carved columns gilded with gold leaf.

During this time, About 40 employees and bodyguards were employed on the estate, which encompassed seven kilometres of river, French gardens, orchard greenhouses, several farms, three mills, a hunting lodge, a rectory and some abandoned school buildings.

This reception room with its high windows overlooking the Indre valley and opening on to François Coty's study is crowned at a height of 9.2 metres by a cupola decorated with a trompe-l'œil by Charles Hoffbauer, a receiver of the Grand Prix de Rome 1924, and depicted a costume ball with friends and family; among them Coty's son-in-law, Paul Dubonnet, actresses Mary Marquet, Edwige Feuillère and Cécile Sorel, the ballet masters Serge Lifar and Serge Diaghilev, the painter Foujita, and the Aga Khan.

In 1940, at the time when the French capital was relocated to Tours, the château had been identified as a potential shelter by a local aide-de-camp of Admiral Darlan and was subsequently occupied by the Department of the Navy.

[4] After two years, in the course of which the library was converted into a lounge bar offering a unique collection of cognac, armagnac, port and whisky, it was opened at the end of 1961, under the name of the "Relais d'Artigny", becoming the first hotel company in Centre-Val de Loire.