château

Château de Fontainebleau, Seine-et-Marne, France, built by Francis I in the 16th century. He invited several Italian artists to decorate the château, and thus the Fontainebleau School of painting was founded. The château was the headquarters of NATO from 1954 to 1966.

The 13th-century moated castle of Angers, in Anjou, western France. Anjou formed part of the so-called Angevin empire under the control of the Plantagenet king, Henry II. In the 1170s the territorial extent stretched from northern Britain southward through what is now western France to the Pyrenees.

Country house or important residence in France. The term originally applied to a French medieval castle. The château was first used as a domestic building in the late 15th century. By the reign of Louis XIII (1610-43) fortifications such as moats and keeps were no longer used for defensive purposes, but merely as decorative features. The Loire valley contains some fine examples of châteaux.