Les Mirandes

A personality.

Some places or houses are hard to describe otherwise. So is the 'manor' with its magisterial view over the valley of 'Les Mirandes' in Montmoreau-Saint-Cybard. Balanced, tightly defined and stately, the manor has stood there like a magisterial 'viewing box' in the landscape for more than a century and a half. And at the same time, it is not ostentatious and manages to subtly embed itself in its surroundings. It is also a thoughtful and unusual building - as if plucked straight from a Parisian boulevard - to the measurements and taste of an urbanised nineteenth-century bourgeois. The whole is surrounded by a playful landscape garden with several 'rooms without a roof'. To linger there, enjoying the view, over a cup of coffee, tea or chocolate, in company. Or to retire there in peace with a book, or just in thought.

A slender wooden spiral staircase connects six stylishly spacious rooms, two on each floor. And in each room the light generously streams in, while you gaze at the grandiose green valley below. On the ground floor and first floor, you hear the steps of those moving above you. Softly, the planks of the parquet creak. This is not a house for rushing, but for sluggish residents.

While in earlier times the aristocracy strutted slowly in their castles and palaces, and today we move fast and often run to the beat of the digital clock and a crowded schedule, the bourgeois rhythm in the nineteenth century was something in between. Strolling is the right word. Garrulous strolling around to look at others in public and be seen yourself. And indoors: a 'slipper parade' where only calm movements are allowed so as not to break the quiet atmosphere of the ticking of the pendulum in the corridor. If you listen carefully and pay attention, the 'manor' in 'Les Mirandes' still speaks to you in a whisper. And even though the time clock has become decor - read: past forever - the "time of the past" still vibrates in walls and matter, just like the rooms and the air are still full of it, which you breathe in and out. And who knows, you may discover the source there: not only outside, in the garden, along the building's foundations, but also inside. Because 'the time of later' is already flowing richly there, if you will. After all, if you keep quiet for a while, wait patiently and find your right rhythm, you will be able to fully indulge in a source of reflection and inspiration.