Cordes-sur-Ciel, Midi-Pyrénées 81170

20 minutes from Albi, in a medieval village in the Tarn, a 13th-century house with courtyard, garden, and views of the Cérou valley. The remarkable house in pale gold stone, medieval in architecture and strikingly authentic, fits naturally into a paved street of the village centre, among lanes, old shops, and ancient remains. This main street is the principal artery through the upper town. Running east to west, the house was built over the town's former ramparts and is arranged over four levels. The street facade is protected as a historic monument. Its verticality gives the building its grandeur. Entirely of stone, this civic frontage presents a highly regular composition, organised in bays and in levels separated by stringcourses. Large pointed-arch openings, their dressed-stone surrounds made up of carefully laid voussoirs, punctuate the ground floor, historically given over to trade. Narrow Gothic windows pierce the upper levels. Jambs and engaged colonnettes frame them, carrying small capitals at the springing of the arches. The facing combines rubble-stone masonry with dressed-stone architectural elements, notably in the surrounds, the quoins, and the supports of the openings. Together they reflect the quality of the Gothic civic architecture that distinguished the village in the 13th century. On the ground floor, the traditional arrangement places sitting room and kitchen beside an interior courtyard at the centre of the vast main house, while the upper levels hold no fewer than six bedrooms and three shower rooms. The garden level provides guest accommodation and an indoor pool. At the rear, a Mediterranean garden, modest in size and well composed, offers views over the tops of the surrounding buildings and the countryside beyond.