Château Lumière

Château Lumière sits at the far end of a long green allée, a pale stone house with slate roofs and a gravel forecourt. Walk the garden axis and you pass box parterres, cone topiaries, a stone cascade and a canal that holds the whole facade in its reflection. It feels less like a weekend house than a private estate kept just for you.

Inside, the rooms are dressed the old way, and properly. One salon is panelled in pale grey under a crystal chandelier, another in oak with blue silk armchairs, a third in deep red velvet. The dining room has a round mahogany table that is set with gilt-rimmed crystal for the photographs, and it looks ready for a long dinner. For anyone weighing a luxury château rental in Torcy, this is the full period experience rather than a modern conversion.

There are five bedrooms, each with a double bed, and almost all of them have canopies: green silk, blue damask, red velvet, a soft mauve. Two bathrooms we've seen have freestanding stone and marble tubs, one with black and gold lacquer panels around it.

The estate is in the Île-de-France countryside, with Paris within reach for a day in town. Château Lumière suits a family gathering, a small celebration or friends who want to live for a week inside a slice of the French past, with formal gardens to wander between meals.