Château de la Corbe

It all began in 1639, when Philippe Esgonnière, the first known lord of the Corbedomère, married Charlotte Baud and laid the foundations of an estate that would endure through the centuries. Four years later, in 1643, he had the chapel erected that still stands today in the grounds — its Romanesque granite portal, its austere buttresses, its square bell turret — the last intact vestige of the former manor house, a silent witness to nearly four hundred years of Vendée history.

For almost two centuries, the estate remained in the hands of the Esgonnière family, quietly weathering the upheavals of the Revolution and the Vendée Wars. At the dawn of the 19th century, it passed by will to Pierre Marie Daniel-Lacombe, canon of Luçon Cathedral and vicar general of the diocese — a man of the Church, a man of letters, heir to a lineage deeply rooted in the soil of the Vendée.

Then came 1898, and with it the turning point that gives the château its soul as we know it today. Henri Daniel-Lacombe, doctor of law and a cultivated man, had the old residence torn down and entrusted an Italian architect with the task of raising something entirely new in its place: a château in the Mediterranean style, with Tuscan lines, bathed in the golden light of the bocage. The honey-coloured façades, the loggias, the pavilions — everything here evokes the gentleness of the Florentine hills, set at the heart of the Vendée countryside. An improbable encounter. An obvious harmony.

Sold in 1919 to the Guitton family and passed down from generation to generation, the estate joined the Lieux d'Exception group in 2025, which opens a new chapter for it: one of celebration, refinement, and shared emotion.

The chapel of 1643 still keeps watch.