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Just a short trip today -- from Laon to Beauvais. However, it took a whole day to do so as I visited two historic chateaus en-route. They could not be more different.
The first was Chateau de Coucy, a ruin. This was the historic home of the Coucy family, important noblemen during the middle ages and kingmakers. I remember reading about them in B arbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror. Today there are a few standing walls, the caves, the foundations of a romanesque church and a great heap of rubble where the keep used to be, before it was blasted to smithereens by the Germans in World War i. Interestingly the town walls, the outer line of defense for the castle, has stood up to time more effectively.
Chateau Pierrefonds is wonderflly preserved -- too wonderfully in fact. It too was a bit of a ruin during the 19th century, but first Napoleaon Bonaparte and later Napoleon III took an interest in it and invested huge sums to bring it to more than its former glory. Really it is a 19th century gothic revival structure today --like Cardiff Castle..
Tomorrow I explore Beauvais.
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