Cheverny: Moulinsart and a Pack of a Hundred Hounds

Required Activities

• Stand in front of the south façade and work out which two end pavilions Hergé left off Moulinsart, then look at what the front is made of — pierre de Bourré, a tuffeau from a village down the road that whitens and hardens as it weathers, which is why the façade is this colour — and count the Roman emperors' busts set into it

• In the dining room, work along Jean Mosnier's 34 painted wooden panels telling the story of Don Quixote, then look down at the chairs, which run on castors made of horn, and at the walls hung with Cordoba leather; upstairs in the Chambre du Roi find the eight tapestries woven about 1640 from Simon Vouet's designs for the labours of Ulysses — six in the room and two more out on the landing

• Find Henry IV's travelling chest, covered in Cordoba leather with the arms of France and Navarre

• Get to the kennels of 1850 for the soupe des chiens and watch a hundred hounds hold off a meal laid out in front of them until they are called; then pick out the two breeds in the cross they come from, the English fox hound and the French Poitevin, in the markings of the anglo-français tricolore

• Go up into the forage lofts for the Tintin rooms, where the interiors of Moulinsart have been rebuilt as sets with models and sound, and find the trompe-l'œil panels lifted straight out of the books; then match each reconstructed room against the real one you walked through in the château below