Combourg, Brittany 35270

45 minutes from Saint-Malo and Mont-Saint-Michel, an 18th-century estate with 25 ha of grounds and lakes. The estate brings together a chateau, three converted outbuildings, a reception hall, an outdoor pool and a chapel. It now operates as a setting for weddings, family stays and private events, with sixteen bedrooms across a total floor area of 960 m². The buildings stand within 25 hectares of grounds, where streamside paths cross a varied landscape of small valleys, woodland and lakes. Chateaubriand mentions in his writings the painter François-Agathon Pinot-du-Petit-Bois, then resident here his canvases, recovered from the attic by the current occupants and carefully restored, now hang in the chateau's sitting rooms and bedrooms. Running north to south, the principal dwelling - around 450 m², dating from the 19th century - backs onto an earlier manor whose known origins reach to 1429. To the north, the main house flanked by two pavilions rises beneath gabled slate roofs. Six regular bays articulate a slender, yellow-rendered facade across three levels, the window surrounds and quoins picked out in russet granite. A prominent scrolled-wing dormer crowned by a carved pediment marks the centre of the roofline, while a corner turret rises at the northwest. To the south, facing the great parterre, the older dwelling stands in dressed sandstone and granite - rectangular in plan, seven regular bays across three levels, beneath a slate roof.