The Château de Franc-Waret is a château situated in Franc-Waret in the municipality of Fernelmont. A moat girdles the castle. The castle is adorned by French gardens and an English style garden sprawls over 120 hectares of the palace.
The indoor decor is classic 17th and 18th century, and is decorated with furniture, silverware, porcelain and tapestries. There are old books and paintings, a few of them Brueghel's.
A ferme-château, or large fortified farmhouse, existed on the site in the 13th century. In the 16th century the building and the grounds were acquired and refurbished by the de Groesbeeck family, and later used as their summer residence. The 16th century block survives, still with a drawbridge and angle-towers. Around the middle of the 18th century Alexandre François de Groesbeeck ordered the building of a large residential wing in a rural Louis XV style. The whole is surrounded by moats.
At the end of the 18th century the property passed into the possession of the Comtes de Croix, and later of the Comtes d'Andigné who still live there.
The château has beautiful gardens in the formal French style as well as a park in the English style and an orangery.
The interior of the château can be visited by appointment and contains lavishly decorated rooms with fine antique furniture, paintings and tapestries.
References:The Walls of Constantinople are a series of defensive stone walls that have surrounded and protected the city of Constantinople (today Istanbul) since its founding as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Constantine the Great. With numerous additions and modifications during their history, they were the last great fortification system of antiquity, and one of the most complex and elaborate systems ever built. They were also the largest and strongest fortification in both the ancient and medieval world.
Initially built by Constantine the Great, the walls surrounded the new city on all sides, protecting it against attack from both sea and land. As the city grew, the famous double line of the Theodosian Walls was built in the 5th century. Although the other sections of the walls were less elaborate, they were, when well-manned, almost impregnable for any medieval besieger.