France
Cormatin is a village of fewer than six hundred people in the southern Burgundy countryside, yet it possesses a château whose interior is among the most extraordinary in France. The Château de Cormatin, built between 1605 and 1629 by the du Blé d'Huxelles family, presents a sober classical facade to the world—three stories of golden Burgundian limestone arranged around a courtyard. But behind that restrained exterior lies a sequence of gilded rooms that represent the most complete surviving example of Louis XIII decorative arts in France, their ceilings and walls covered in gold leaf, lapis lazuli-blue paint, and allegorical paintings that depict the virtues, the seasons, and the gods of antiquity with a sumptuousness that anticipates Versailles.
The village itself epitomizes the Burgundian ideal of la France profonde—deep France, the rural heartland that Parisians romanticize and tourists rarely reach. Stone houses with steep tiled roofs line the single main street, which passes the Romanesque church, a boulangerie, and a small café before dissolving into fields of sunflowers, vineyards, and the gentle hills of the Mâconnais. The pace of life is governed by the seasons: harvest in autumn, pruning in winter, flowering in spring, and the long, warm summers when the village gardens overflow with tomatoes, courgettes, and roses. The nearby Via Francigena, the medieval pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome, passes through this landscape, and the sense of timelessness is not an illusion—it reflects a way of life that has changed less in these villages than in almost any corner of Western Europe.
Burgundy is France's gastronomic heartland, and the villages around Cormatin produce ingredients of extraordinary quality. The white Charolais cattle that graze in the surrounding pastures—their pale, muscular forms a common sight along the country roads—produce beef that is considered the finest in France. Bresse chickens, raised under strictly controlled conditions in the flatlands to the east, are the only poultry in the world to hold an AOC (Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée). The local cheeses—Époisses, Saint-Marcellin, Cîteaux—are pungent, complex, and best enjoyed with a glass of local wine. Speaking of wine: Cormatin sits between the Côte Chalonnaise and the Mâconnais, producing white wines (primarily Chardonnay) and reds (Pinot Noir and Gamay) that offer exceptional quality at a fraction of the price charged by the more famous appellations to the north.
The region surrounding Cormatin offers a concentration of medieval and Romanesque heritage that is staggering. Cluny, just fifteen kilometers south, was once the seat of the most powerful monastery in medieval Christendom—its abbey church, until the construction of St. Peter's in Rome, was the largest church in the world. The village of Taizé, seven kilometers away, hosts an ecumenical Christian community that draws over 100,000 young pilgrims annually. The Romanesque churches of Brancion, Chapaize, and Tournus—the latter's Saint-Philibert Abbey being one of the most important Romanesque buildings in Europe—form a circuit that could occupy days. The cycling is superb: the voie verte (greenway) follows the old railway line through the wine country, and the quiet département roads wind through landscapes that Lamartine, the Romantic poet born in nearby Mâcon, described as the most beautiful in France.
Cormatin is visited on Burgundy canal and river cruise itineraries, typically as a shore excursion from the Saône River. The best time to visit is May through October, with June and September offering the most pleasant temperatures and the vineyards in their full glory. The grape harvest in September and October brings a festive energy to the wine villages. July and August can be warm but are the peak of the garden season, when the château's grounds—restored in the style of a seventeenth-century parterre—are at their most spectacular.