Château de la Pataudière à Champigny-sur-Veude en Indre-et-Loire

Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

Château de la Pataudière, located in Champigny-sur-Veude (Indre-et-Loire), has been a monument listed as a Historic Monument since 1997. Its architecture combines a central rectangular body, built at the hinge of the 16th and 17th centuries, and two pavilions added in the 19th century. The building preserves traces of its defensive origins, such as blocked mouths with fire and burning fire, as well as a wall of partial enclosures, a gate and two corner towers. One of these towers houses a chapel, the other a spiral staircase leading back to the round road.

The first attested seigneur was Étienne Fergon, secretary of Louis III de Montpensier and then general finance of Languedoc. In 1601 the seigneury passed to René de Lomeron, the king's adviser and secretary, whose tombstone remains in the local church. In the 19th century, Georges Félix Pays-Mellier, married to a descendant of the Lomeron, acquired the castle and set up a zoological garden in the park at the beginning of the 20th century. The communes, organised around a central courtyard, are not protected.

The inscription in the Historical Monuments in 1997 covers facades and roofs (outside the 19th part), the court of honor, as well as the fence and its turrets. The site, always private, bears witness to the architectural and landscape transformations linked to its successive owners, mixing defensive heritage, seigneurial residence and exotic project with its historical zoo.

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