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| Padiès |
To enter the Padiès courtyard is to enter another world. Somehow the light is different, the breeze is different, the sounds are different the perfume is different … one enters a world of changed sensibility.
The Château de Padiès is a unique Renaissance Château complex set in the Lauragais of Pastel fame – the “Pays de Cocaigne”, Cathar country and the land of the Troubadours.
Our area, the Lauragais, has often been likened to Tuscany, to where the blue “pastel” produced from the woad grown here was exported in the 15th Century. The architectural and cultural influences came back (perhaps in part through Queen Catherine de Medici, whose hunting pavillion is half an hour from here) and is very evident in the Padiès “renaissance” façades with their finely carved mullioned windows, or fenêtres à meneaux, populated with fantastic mythical beings, lions heads and symbols of plenty. Padiès appears to be a Toulousain hotel particulier transported to the countryside, yet the mass of the building and the diagonally placed towers recall the military role of the château.
As one of the three Seigneuries of Lempaut, Padiès was an integral part of village life, at the time of the Napoleonic census, forty five people lived in the immediate viscinity of the château. They built their shelters using local materials, they farmed, gardened, produced the food and clothes, baked bread, killed and processed the pig and generally lived…..and loved….. in a sustainable environment. The Padiès project is an attempt to reconnect Padiès with its surroundings in a sustainable way.
Padiès was listed on the Inventaire Supplementaire des Monuments Historic (ISMH) in 1928.