Château de Tanlay

The walls are of limestone under tall sloping slate roofs à la française, surrounding three sides of a central court with cylindrical towers at its four corners.

The perfect symmetry of the cour d'honneur is part of Tanlay's serene charm.

The rebuilding in Renaissance style is owing to the brother of the Admiral de Coligny, François de Coligny d'Andelot (1521–1569), who inherited the site in ruinous condition in 1547 and whose construction campaigns of 1555-1568 during the Wars of Religion, when Tanlay was a center of Huguenot resistance, left the residence uncompleted.

Building was recommenced afterwards by Michel Particeli d'Hemery, the surintendant de finance under Mazarin, who completed the château to designs by Pierre Le Muet between 1643 and 1649.

The house is also renowned for its gallery painted in trompe-l'œil and for the frescoes in the Tour de la Ligue ("Tower of the Huguenot League"), in which the antagonists of the War are represented in the guise of Olympic deities, and for its mellow stone and its remarkable canal, moats and grounds, which include a nymphaeum or théâtre d'eau by Pierre Le Muet.