#BEST CHATEAU IN DORDOGNE SERIAL#

#BEST CHATEAU IN DORDOGNE SERIAL#

Serial sightseeing is simply not a thing: rather, indulging in the deliciously slow tempo of local life – at the farmers market, along a towpath or à table – is the No 1 tourist attraction. It compels silent wonder.Known as Périgord in French, this pastoral pocket of southwest France is all about exploring at leisure – by car, bicycle or on foot – a bucolic countryside bejewelled with storybook châteaux and hilltop bastides (fortified villages) high above the Dordogne river. Here some 200 figures, mostly bison and horses, graze and stampede for eternity across the shadowy walls. But Font-de-Gaume, which I visited with Commarque, still is. The most famous of these sites, at Lascaux, is no longer open to the public. The Dordogne backdrop includes 28 subterranean sites containing unique prehistoric cave paintings from between 20,000 and 15,000 bc.

The first part of that observation is open to debate. What is exceptional is the surroundings.’ They fret that if it were, Oro, who is eight, would in time simply stop coming and one day sell it. ‘He may live like a monk,’ Commarque said, looking at me pointedly, ‘but I assure you that he has never mended a sock in his life.’ I am used to mending my own socks,’ he responded. You could live like a monk.’ ‘I was a child of the war years. ‘Mind you,’ said his son, ‘You need nothing. These themes inform much of his work, perhaps most famously his Fluxland project of 2016, part sculpture, part performance, part conference, which involved him piloting a converted barge, topped with a mirrored polyhedron structure, up and down the Thames. He also plans to launch seminars at La Bourlie later this year, open to those who share his fascination with the ways in which art, politics, science and the environment connect. With an inventory such as this, I cannot imagine Commarque will have much difficulty attracting guests or finding takers for spots on his artist-in-residence programme. Le Camp d’Oro, capacious canvas tents in which Karen Blixen and Denys Finch Hatton would have felt entirely at home. Les Bories, an old tobacco-drying barn, with soaring ceilings and a sense of splendid isolation. There is Le Pressoir, a converted walnut-oil mill. Toned-down, decluttered versions of the opulent eclecticism of the château are to be found in a number of buildings elsewhere on the grounds. A gorgeous, neon flower-shaped chandelier and ghostly tree sculptures in the living room.

Photographs of the sea printed in large format on aluminium. Then, of course, there are Commarque’s own pieces, in various media. I got a kick out of reading myself to sleep beneath a pair of gilded lamps, tall as lampposts, ornately carved, with shades the size of umbrellas, that had once illuminated the nocturnal labours of Ortensia’s great-uncle, the filmmaker Luchino Visconti. A pair of tortoiseshell lamps that somehow escaped, presumably very slowly, from one of Christian Dior’s houses.Ībout a third of the really swishy stuff, he told me, comes courtesy of his wife’s family – both sides, Visconti di Modrone and Ruspoli. There are pieces of furniture from his and his wife’s other houses, from flea markets. Thus there are a few chunky armoires and sideboards left over from his parents’ days. The answer, as he nicely puts it, is ‘mixity’. ‘How am I, as an artist in the 21st century, to make a bridge between the past and the present?’ he asks. The château has been a work in progress since the Middle Ages. Stools in the château’s flagstoned kitchen Simon UptonĬommarque describes the interplay between old and new, classical and contemporary, as a patchwork.

Best chateau in dordogne