Brissac: The Tallest Château in France

Required Activities

• Stand below the front and count the floors up — seven levels over 204 rooms, the tallest château in France — then walk round to the east face and find the two squat 15th-century towers left over from the castle this one was built on top of

• Go through the rooms of a house the Cossé-Brissac have held since the 16th century, and work out where you would have put the furniture of Versailles: it was moved in here in 1939 and 1940, along with works from the Gustave Moreau and Nissim de Camondo museums and the treasure of Angers cathedral, and it stayed until 1946

• Find the theatre Jeanne-Marie Say had built into the house and opened in 1890 — two storeys of auditorium, restored around 1983 — and the stage whose 1950 performance grew into the Festival d'Anjou

• Pick out where the 17th-century rebuild meets the medieval castle: Jacques Corbineau was handed a fortress on the point of demolition and made something grandiose out of it, which is why the two 15th-century towers on the east face stand against a Baroque front

• Ask the guides about the dame blanche and get the real story out of them first: Jacques de Brézé ran his wife Charlotte de Valois — daughter of Charles VII and Agnès Sorel — and her lover Pierre de Lavergne through with his sword here on 1 June 1477, and only the stormy-night ghost that followed is legend