Moulinsart Castle

The serene country estate modeled on a real Loire château.

via Wikipedia: Château de Cheverny · see source

Moulinsart Castle is the fictional country estate that serves as the home of Captain Haddock and his friends in The Adventures of Tintin. The Belgian comic book creator Hergé used the Château de Cheverny as a model for his fictional Château de Moulinsart. In these books, the two outermost wings are not present, but the remaining central tower and two wings are almost identical to Cheverny.

Lore & Background

Hergé based Moulinsart Castle directly on the Château de Cheverny, a real château in the Loire Valley. The fictional version omits the two outermost wings of Cheverny, keeping only the central tower and two wings, which are almost identical to the real building. This design choice gives Moulinsart its distinctive, symmetrical appearance in the comics. The real Château de Cheverny was built between 1624 and 1630 to designs by the sculptor architect of Blois, Jacques Bougier, who was trained in the atelier of Salomon de Brosse. Its design at Cheverny recalls features of the Palais du Luxembourg. The interiors of the real château were completed by Élisabeth Hurault, wife of the marquis de Montglas, by 1650, employing craftsmen from Blois.

Reader's Guide

Moulinsart Castle, as depicted in the comics, is a direct visual copy of the Château de Cheverny, minus the two outermost wings. The real château is located in Cheverny, Loir-et-Cher, France, and is one of the châteaux of the Loire Valley. Its central Grand Salon on the ground floor was decorated under the orders of the marquise de Montglas. Among the paintings are a portrait of Jeanne d'Aragon, from the school of Raphael and a portrait of Marie Johanne La Saumery, Comtesse de Cheverny by Pierre Mignard.

A gallery leads to the Petit Salon which is hung with five Flemish tapestries and a portrait attributed to Maurice-Quentin de La Tour. In the Library are hung portraits by Jean Clouet and Hyacinthe Rigaud. A stone staircase carved with trophies of arms and the arts leads to the Grand Appartements. A guard room with a collection of arms and armour leads to the Chambre du Roi, richly hung with five Paris tapestries after designs by Simon Vouet, representing the story of Ulysses.

Did You Know?

The château was opened to the public in 1914, one of the first to do so.
A pack of some one hundred and twenty hunting hounds are kept in kennels within the grounds.
Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother visited the château in 1963.