The house stands on an enclosed plot that covers around 500m². You reach it from one of the calmest streets in the town centre. The property has its own garage. There is a main house and, at a right angle to it, a former straw storehouse, with a separate door leading out into the entrance court. Part of this old storehouse was recently transformed into a vast self-contained apartment with two bedrooms. The buildings offer a total floor area of almost 360m². A court on the south side and a garden on the north side frame this enclosed plot, which enjoys absolute privacy. A tall tree stands in the entrance court, which has a cobblestone path of local pebbles. This court provides the perfect buffer between the street and the dwelling. A raised walkway, added later, looks down at the terrace. This raised walkway is edged with a plainly designed wrought-iron balustrade. On the north side, the house leads out into a garden with a discreet swimming pool set in a raised section at the top of broad steps. These broad steps, which recall the terraced seating of an amphitheatre, separate a tree-dotted section from the paved terrace lower down. The house was probably built in the late 13th century or early 14th century, where old outbuildings belonging to the Montfrin Knights Templar commandery once stood. The Templars settled here in 1169 and stayed here until the Order of the Knights Templar was disbanded in 1312. The commandery and its annexes were then transferred to the Order of the Knights Hospitaller. On these remnants, which have escaped history’s twists of fate, including possible Saracen forays, a dwelling was built at the end of the 18th century, upon the medieval ground-floor rooms and the tunnel-like vaulted cellar. The property has kept the scale of the Knights Templar structure, as well as many remarkable architectural features, including fragments of stone-mullioned windows, the vaults of the lower rooms and medieval lintel keystones. To ensure comfort and insulation, modern wrought-iron window frames, crafted finely, have tastefully replaced old ones here and there. The windows are fitted with traditional wooden shutters that are painted red, which is a widespread tradition here in France’s Languedoc province.

The main house

The house has been fully restored since 2020 with respect for its rich past and many remarkable historical features. It has a vaulted basement, a ground floor, a first floor and a second floor. It forms an S shape on a plot of around 500m². It is centred upon a main section, which is flanked with two short sections that protrude at a right angle: one on the court side on the south-west side and one on the garden side on the north-east side. It offers a total floor area of around 250m². A square corner tower facing north and south adjoins the court-facing elevation. It houses a spiral staircase of local stone from the 13th century. These stairs connect to the two upper floors and the roof, where a roof terrace could be made. The tower has a series of asymmetrical arrow slits that offer a range of views, like paintings, of the town’s rooftops below and its chateau up in its commanding position.

The basement
The basement is an important feature of the house in terms of built heritage. It extends beneath half of the house. Its vaulted tunnel-like cellar with opus incertum stonework is a mystery that remains unresolved today. We do not know when it dates back to, though it is doubtless the oldest part of the property. Perhaps it was never related to the property. But what was it used for? Was it a lower room set back from the neighbouring Knights Templar commandery? Or was it an underground passageway via which people, with their goods, could flee an enemy? Or was it simply a storehouse for goods? In any case, today, it is the ideal wine cellar, with a constantly cool temperature. And during heatwaves it is the perfect refuge too.

The ground floor
The ground floor leads out to the cobblestone court on the south side and to the garden on the north side. It has three connecting rooms with groined vault ceilings formed by the intersection of two barrel vaults – a system from the Roman era that was often used in France’s Languedoc province in the Middle Ages. The largest of these three rooms is a dual-aspect lounge with a 19th-century fireplace in perfect working order. This fireplace has stone legs, a mantelpiece of sculpted wood and a stucco trumeau panel with mouldings. The kitchen, housed in a section that protrudes at a right-angle on the north-east side, has been renovated in a modern style. The third room is used as an office or as a bedroom with a shower room. It looks out at the garden. It is extended with a utility room that looks out at the court. The walls are lime-plastered in an ivory tone, revealing door surrounds of two types of local stone, which shows that the property was redesigned over different periods of history. The floor is covered with slabs of Montpellier stone, from quarries in France’s Hérault department.

The first floor
A landing door that ensures insulation takes you into a totally different ambience: here the 18th and 19th centuries follow on from the Middle Ages. Yet the heterogeneous character of the house is preserved. Indeed, the edifice’s mix of construction periods is a major aspect of its unique richness. On the court side, there is a broad terrace with a walkway that runs along the full breadth of the elevation, connecting to two of the bedrooms. From this terrace and walkway, a door also leads in to the former straw storehouse, which is now a dwelling. A corridor connects to the bedrooms, each of which has their own shower room or bathroom. The bedrooms look out at both the court and garden. So natural light, which changes with the passing of the seasons, passes all the way through them. One of the bedrooms has, above its fireplace, a so-called marriage trumeau panel from the late 18th century that bears two doves. This underlines the house’s status as a family home. On the garden side, a third bedroom enjoys a west-facing position in the other section extending at a right angle. The walls are whitened with lime plastering. Wood strip flooring extends across the bedrooms and cement tiles adorn the floors of the hallways.

The second floor
The spiral staircase connects to the second floor. This floor has two connecting rooms on the south side, without a right-angled section on the court side, though there is a right-angled section, used as a bedroom, on the east side, where the garden is. The landing leads into a spacious room that serves as a reading room, beneath an exposed roof frame with rectangular terracotta tiles placed between the insulation and the barrel tiles. And beyond the reading room, there is a cinema room. The walls are white with lime-plastering and the floors are covered with old Provençal terracotta tiles traditionally used in roof spaces. This floor also has a special architectural feature: a so-called Saracen fireplace with an imposing pyramidal hood that stretches up outside, ending with a stone minaret-like chimney stack upon the roof.

The attic
At the top of the spiral staircase, a door opens on the north side, facing the Saracen fireplace’s minaret chimney stack and leading to a space demarcated by two metal girders. Here a roof terrace could be created, offering a view of the town’s rooftops and the countryside of France’s Gard province in the distance.