A view from the top of the rock?
What a view! La-Roche-Guyon. This post contains two complimentary views. One is from the road in front of the Chateau and the other from the top of the Donjon looking back at the river. There are three ‘parts’ to La Roche-Guyon: the village itself, a large 14th century Chateau, and the medieval Donjon (in English we would say “Keep”).
La-Roche-Guyon stands on a broad bend in the Seine River. It is 10km east of Vernon in the Ile de France (Paris) region of France. The village is officially classified as one of the ‘most beautiful villages of France’. It originally developed below the medieval Chateau next to the river.
Two views are shared to show how high the keep is and how exhausting it was to climb. The view is well worth the climb though.
From the left of the image the chalky hillside arcs round to the centre of the image almost as if it is a container for the river. The village is central to the image. On the right of the image the patterns of the formal ‘potager’ (kitchen garden) can be seen between the Chateau and the river. This is a lovely sleepy village to wander round. La-Roche-Guyon is a few minutes from Giverny where Monet’s garden is found.
More History
The Chateau de La Roche-Guyon had an interesting military use in the Second World War when Field Marshall Rommel established his base here to direct the German response to the Allied invasion of 1944.
Historically the region managed to remain under independent control despite the powerful regions that stood either side – the lands of the Loire Valley and the Kings of France to the south and the lands of the Dukes of Normandy to the north.
