MasSault (84)

Price :

$1,787,100

USD

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Surface480 m²bedrooms15 bathroom1 land41.9 ha

A 41-hectare estate in the Vaucluse on the Albion Plateau, with a fortified farmhouse, distillery and outbuildings surrounded by lavender fields. It is probably one Provence’s wildest areas that still exists. Comprised of high plateaux dotted with scarcely half a dozen villages, which are often sparsely populated fortified settlements, these Virgilian landscapes, inhabited by goats and sheep, suddenly gained international renown at the end of the 20th century. Indeed, between 1971 and 1996, they housed the silos and launching pads for the ground-to-ground ballistic missiles that formed France’s nuclear deterrent. The secrecy surrounding these major strategic military installations had the virtue of keeping the Albion Plateau free from tourist intrusion at a time when a real estate frenzy was sweeping the rest of Provence. None of the missiles stored here as a deterrent were ever fired and once these cumbersome machines had been moved elsewhere, the expanses of rugged, wooded plateaux returned to nature.
Since then, the area has been split into two large regional natural parks: the Mont Ventoux natural park and the Luberon natural park.
Tucked away in a dell, surrounded by forty-one hectares of land, this residence is one where the utmost was done to foster a self-sufficient lifestyle.
At the time, these plateaux were home to four main types of houses: in the villages there were houses of several storeys with balconies, whereas outside the villages there were either long, low-rise buildings, houses with outbuildings grouped around a courtyard, or very isolated, fortified farms with courtyards, corner towers and dovecotes.
However, this categorisation was not set in stone and it was not uncommon to slip from one style to the next, adapting them to suit the times.
This is precisely the case with this residence, which borrows a little from each category, with a balcony, corner tower and courtyard, set out like a hamlet made up of a farmhouse, lavender distillery and fortified outbuildings, softened by the presence away from the buildings of a large, inviting swimming pool.