Ray-sur-Saône: The Château Above the Saône

Required Activities

• Walk the free park Eugène Bühler laid out in the 1870s: enter by the Louis XV gateway dated 1734 that the Salverte family brought from Auxonne, follow the straight avenue between its double rows of Dutch limes, purple beeches and yews, and carry on to the stand of rare exotic trees planted at the north end in 1880, which hides the burial vault of the lords of Ray

• Go down to the terraces that step south from the château among the old ramparts, tens of metres above the river, and from them pick out the two semi-circular towers left of the enceinte — the tour Tranchée and the tour du Guet — and the rebuilt postern beside them

• Walk the castral bourg on the flank of the château — in the 15th century a single village street of about thirty timber and stone houses — and find the gate, still open, that leads to the lord's working buildings set along the curtain wall: press, oven, hayloft and barns, with the half-round tower that was turned into a dovecote in 1591

• On the guided tour of the rooms, find the two lacquer chests that came as wedding presents from Jacques François Stuart, the pretender to the English crown, to François-Philippe de Marmier and Marguerite Hamilton, and read the family motto cut at the foot of the great chimney in the hall of arms — Ante omnia sylvae, before all else the forests