HICKORY CREEK — Down Ronald Reagan Avenue and off Swisher Road, past the town hall and not far from Wal-Mart, where kayaks were selling Wednesday for $199, sits one of the most expensive homes ever built in North Texas.

And it’s for sale.

Champ d’Or, a 48,000-square-foot mansion on 39 acres with a 1.5-acre lake, stands apart from much smaller estates and burgeoning development nearby. After going on and off the market for a decade, the French-inspired chateau will go on… (View original article)

“We must have looked at more than 100 houses in that time,” says Caroline, a
former PA to the chef Michel Roux. “We knew we wanted a place with a view,
on the edge of a village and not more than a 90-minute drive from an
airport. Lot-et-Garonne was where all those things came together.”

It’s in the south-west, a hundred miles from the Dordogne, and roughly
equidistant from three airports (Bergerac, Bordeaux and Toulouse). The area
is becomin… (View original article)

Sotheby’s
Fleur de Lys, the Saperstein home in Beverly Hills

ON APRIL 19, Sotheby’s New York will auction off the contents of Fleur de Lys, the 45,000-square-foot Los Angeles home of socialite Suzanne Saperstein. The collection is one of those glimpses into a folly that recurs every few decades and to which L.A. is particularly susceptible: the reinterpretation of 18th-century France, robber-baron-style.

Sotheby’s
BON JOVI MEETS LOUI… (View original article)

Apr 13, 2012 12:37pm

Hotels With Titanic Ties

<... (View original article)

Situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, in an area nicknamed the “Swiss Riviera,” the Chateau de Chillon is a historic must-see. The castle was built sometime during the Bronze Age, and was intended to defend the passage between northern and southern Europe. There’s plenty to explore inside the castle—from underground former prisons to stunning chapels.

Now that it’s no longer needed as a military defense spot, the Chateau de Chillon

earns its keep as a wine-making operat… (View original article)

(Newser) – A man’s home is his castle, nowhere more so than in the ritzy Washington, DC, suburb of Great Falls, Va.

That’s where one couple has elected to build their 25,424-square-foot mansion, dubbed “Le Chateau de Lumiere” and fashioned after the Palace of Versailles.

The only thing bigger than the planned house? The brouhaha over it.

The Post reports that the owner of the neighboring home—former Gannett honcho Craig Dubow—has filed a lawsuit … (View original article)

Château de la Goujeonnerie in the Vendée, western France, is a magnificent
mansion in 18 acres of parkland, with three ‘floating’ towers that give it a
fairytale feel. Built for a local magistrate in 1872, it has 22 rooms over
three floors, a lake and views of rolling green hills in the distance. As is
so often the case, however, the grand residence limped into the 21st century
in a sorry state. When its current owners found it in 2006, it had been derelic… (View original article)