Visits

The outside visit
Visiting Courances 50km from Paris
The château and the gardens are open to the public on week-ends and public holidays from the first week-end in April until Toussaint (All Saint's Day).
The opening hours for the park are from 2 pm to 6.30 pm.
Guided tours for the château take place from 2.30 pm, every fourty minutes, until 6 pm.
On weekdays, tours are reserved for groups and by appointement only.
A unique example of a Renaissance "water garden"
Water garden were invented in France in the sixteenth Century, after the enclosed medieval gardens and before the classic french garden.
At Courance, water is the path that leads the visitors through the grounds.
Fourteen springs gush from the ground and are transformed into seventeen ornamental ponds and pools

This sixteenth-century garden inspired the French-style landscape design
It may well have been at Courances where le Nôtre conceived of his French garden. It was originally attributed to André Le Nôtre, although it was the landscape designers Henri and Achille Duchêne who, in the early twentieth century, fully developped the classical design of Courances... For more than 500 years, the successive owners fashioned the soul of the property, while preserving its integrity. Jean-Louis de Ganay, the current owner, decided to simplify the geometric lines of the park and to allow nature its full expression, making Courances a decidedly contemporary garden.

Flamboyant colors in the Anglo-Japanese garden
The vogue for Japanese art in the nineteenth century revolutionized the work of the Impressionists and also strongly influenced landscape design. Berthe de Ganay created a delicate garden before 1914 as a contrast to the regularity of the existing gardens. With its artificials island, rich botanical specimens and cotemporary bridge, the Anglo-Japanese garden at Courances is a perfectly composed painting or perhaps a mirage?
The inside visit