Photo : Arnaud 25 / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
Château de Frontenay
Built on a spur to protect salt convoys, a precious commodity since the early Middle Ages, Frontenay has come through the centuries with its twelfth-century vaulted rooms and fourteenth-century keep.
Seen from the plain it overlooks, it keeps the look of a fortress. But seen from the entrance vault, the Viollet-le-Duc façade of an eighteenth-century building shows that a certain art of living followed the art of war, expressed in the tiers of terraces and gardens, the hornbeam alley and the lilac groves offering everyone places to dream.
Entrusted in 1446 by the lords of Chalon-Arlay to one of their squires, Gauthier de Fallerans, Frontenay is still lived in by his descendants. Five hundred years of family continuity, each generation lovingly embellishing and maintaining the place, help create a space of security and beauty, as if suspended outside time.
