Château de Bagnols near Lyons, France
The Château de Bagnols is a grande dame of a building: a 13th-century, painstakingly cared-for castle with important Gothic fireplaces and priceless frescoes. It’s a mini-fortress in a picture-perfect hamlet just north of Lyons surrounded by beaujolais vineyards.
We say: The château is incredibly sexy and romantic.It’s not the moat and a drawbridge, its antique four-poster beds, the Michelin-starred restaurant or the architectural details heaving with significance (though they all help), it’s the fact that the château feels intimate and discreet despite, on the face of it, being hugely imposing.