Domaine des Étangs - Auberge Resorts Collection

To the extent that there is such a thing as the “typical” castle hotel (arguable, but bear with us), Domaine des Étangs is a departure. The storybook stone château, flanked by fortified towers, is present and accounted for. But rather than shoehorn two dozen modern hotel rooms into a medieval floor plan, inevitably leaving some unlucky guests with circular rooms, or staring out at the countryside through a three-inch-wide arrow-slit, here they’ve done something slightly more clever.

The rooms are located not solely within the picturesque château but scattered about the estate, with several in the traditional stone building that once housed the servants’ quarters and the rest in outlying farmhouses rented in their entirety. All have distinctly post-medieval amenities like Nespresso machines and air conditioning, as well as bathrooms about which the running water is the least impressive thing.

All this sprawl — the good kind, not to be mistaken for the bad suburban kind — makes for a healthy amount of countryside-walking and scenery-regarding. In addition to more open space than you’ll know what to do with, there’s a pool, a tennis court, and even several lakes, complete with rowboats just left laying about, waiting for you. And of course there’s a restaurant, Dyades, serving Charente produce, Bordeaux wines, and a wide variety of local cognacs in the stone outbuilding beside the château.

How To Get There:

Domaine des Étangs is approximately a one-hour drive from Angoulême, where there’s a train station, and also one hour from Limoges-Bellegarde Airport.