Feudal survival
The castle, erected on a quadrangular platform and surrounded by dry moats, is a square plan (57 × 60 m). The four main bodies surround a courtyard, with four large bastioned corner towers. It is a modernized version of a medieval castle. All the outer façades are crowned with a covered machicolation on consoles: in addition to the path round the battlements, the arrow slits and the loopholes, bastioned towers provided efficient flanking and completed a defensive system, which, at the beginning of the 17th century, was more for reasons of prestige and decoration than fortification…

A successful example of the late Renaissance
The primitive entrance is located on the North wing where a part of a sumptuous great door remains. Uncommonly, the body of the main dwelling was not the South wing (disappeared), but the East wing that was better exposed with its terrace. This façade overlooking the courtyard shows perfect order and harmonious regularity: it displays five rows of rib vaults, designed to be topped with high dormers (these have just been restored), alternating with four spans of curved shelled niches. An elegant rhythm of lit and blank spans…
The whole is punctuated horizontally by the two styles that demarcate the identical entablatures and by two bough frieze volutes and vertically by pairs of fluted Ionic and Corinthian pilasters that frame each rib vault, and by flat pilasters (with volutes, cut branches, and vases of flowers) which frame each niche and are topped by a pediment broken up by acanthus cornice work.

A refined outside decoration
Only the left part of the triumphal North gate remains: fluted Doric pilasters with wrinkled projections, classic entablature and the front wall displaying weapons trophies: fasces, spears, swords, quivers… The door of the dwelling half round with sculpted corner mouldings of masters formerly displayed the Verrières coat of arms (today those of Chanteau). Six statues in stone from Savonnières filled the niches (goddesses of classical mythology, on the first level; religious allegories on the second level, brought back in the 19th century. The outer façades with wrinkled projections in grey stone from Taillancourt decorate the corners of the towers and form curved ties from top to bottom (disfigured by the modifications of the East façade on the terrace).
The ninety-six remaining consoles on which the machicolation rest are remarkably decorated: foliage and above all fantastic figureheads (“Indian” heads, leaf heads), the grimaces of Montbras, a curious baroque gallery. Cartouches with trophies also adorn the machicolation.