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Tag / chateau

Don’t be a Tourist, Episode 2: Parisian Ghost Town

And we’re back with another episode from our new web series, Don’t be a Tourist in Paris. Before you tuck in, this is the second episode, which means you should probably go back and watch Episode 1 if you haven’t already seen it. Or just watch it after. I’m not fussy. For today’s line-up, your…

Who Will Rescue the Ruins of This French Fairytale Chateau?

“STOP!” I howled from the passenger seat of the car as it sped past the padlocked gates in the darkness of the old town square. “You have to go back– I saw something!” We’d left Paris that evening for the long weekend and stopped for dinner in the little commune of Fontenay-Trésigny, thirty minutes from the city. As…

Saving Sobański Palace

We thought we knew how the story would end. After all, we’ve seen our fair share of crumbling castles here at Messy Nessy Chic – chateaux holding on for dear life in the final hours of their swan song, left to the whims of nature and urbex explorers. Restoring them is a near anachronistic quest,…

Mansion of the Month: Miami’s Villa Viscaya

It rose from the mangrove swamps of Miami; an Italian Renaissance paradise surrounded by dense tropical forest in Coconut Grove, the city’s oldest continuously inhabited neighbourhood. They called it the “Hearst Castle of the East”, even though Villa Vizcaya came first. James Deering was heir to a harvesting fortune, a lover of the arts, an antiques…

The Chateau You Should Visit Instead of Versailles

Chateau de Versailles can keep its 7 million visitors a year. I’ve got my own little-known gem of the Parisian countryside that you’d find if you drive 15 minutes further up the road from the sun king’s famed royal residence. The garden is filled with 18th century follies that would have made Marie Antoinette green with envy,…
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Lunch at the Forgotten Rothschild Party Palace

I stood looking up at the gates, hands on my hips, wondering what forgotten chateau I’d stumbled upon this time. We’d taken a detour to avoid the traffic back into Paris and suddenly pulled over into the ditch by the side of the road at my absolute insistence. What I didn’t know then, peeping through…

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Scotland’s Sleeping Castle

She’s been asleep for over half a century. Cocooned by a forest, half swallowed by nature’s encroaching fingers. A forgotten castle in the Scottish Highlands, waiting for its story to continue or find an ending. Such places do exist, you just have to be curious enough to find them. If you’ve read my road trip guide to Scotland, you’ll know that…

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Hidden beneath the surface layers of the internet, there’s a place where we keep our most secret addresses, untapped archives, creator’s inspiration,  collector’s guides, explorer’s manuals, obscure research and much more… And it’s made for our keyholders only!

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Daughter Revives her Father’s Sleeping Chateau, Achieves Absolute Paradise on Earth

I‘ve just returned from a weekend in the middle of nowhere, France, staying in an 11th century chateau with better modern art and design than any major museum I’d ever reluctantly queued up for. And a peculiar thing happened when I got home after 48 blissful hours away. At 10 o’clock on a Sunday evening, I suddenly began re-decorating. In the midst of carefully re-arranging…

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Hidden beneath the surface layers of the internet, there’s a place where we keep our most secret addresses, untapped archives, creator’s inspiration,  collector’s guides, explorer’s manuals, obscure research and much more… And it’s made for our keyholders only!

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The Rotting Rothschild Mansion in Paris

The Rothschilds are known as one of the greatest European banking dynasties ever established, amassing the largest private fortune in modern history. The family is less well-known for anything to do with squalor, ruin or decay. But just 5 miles from the Notre-Dame, beyond the lush green lawn of the Edmond de Rothschild park, standing defiantly behind a thick wall of…

Chateau Miranda is Here to Break Your Heart

Her turrets sprouted mushrooms, and vines ate up her halls once filled with aristocrats, candelabras, and plushy velvet lounges. It was one of Belgium’s grandest castles, but the Chateau Miranda had run out of time —at least according to its guardian, the Count de Liedekerke-Beaufort. In October of last year, he set the 100-room giant ablaze…
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