A chteau is a power house, as Sir John Summerson dubbed the British and Irish stately

homes that are the British Isles' architectural counterparts to French chteaux. It is the
personal (and usually hereditary) badge of a family that, with some official rank, locally
represents the royal authority; thus, the word chteau often refers to the dwelling of a
member of either the French royalty or the nobility, but some fine chteaux, such as Vauxle-Vicomte, were built by the essentially high-bourgeois people but recently ennobled: taxfarmers and ministers of Louis XIII and his royal successors. However, the quality of the
residences could vary considerably, from royal chteaux owned by royalty and the wealthy
elite near larger towns[3] to run-down chteaux vacated by poor nobility and officials in the
countryside[4] isolated and vulnerable.[5]
A chteau is supported by its terres (lands), composing a demesne that renders the society
of the chteau largely self-sufficient, in the manner of the historic Roman and Early
Medieval villa system, (cf. manorialism, hacienda). The open villas of Rome in the times of Pliny
the Elder, Maecenas, and Emperor Tiberiusbegan to be walled-in, and then fortified in the 3rd
century AD, thus evolving to castellar chteaux.[6] In modern usage, a chteau retains
some enclosures that are distant descendants of these fortifying outworks: a fenced, gated,
closeable forecourt, perhaps a gatehouse or a keeper's lodge, and supporting outbuildings
(stables, kitchens, breweries, bakeries, manservant quarters in the garonnire). Besides
the cour dhonneur (court of honour) entrance, the chteau might have an
inner cour (court), and inside, in the private residence, the chteau faces a simply and
discreetly enclosed park.
In the city of Paris, the Louvre (fortified) and the Luxembourg (originally suburban)
represented the original chteau but lost their chteau etymology, becoming palaces
when the City enclosed them. In the U.S., the word chteau took root selectively, in
the Gilded Age resort town of Newport, Rhode Island, the chteaux were called cottages, but,
north of Wilmington, Delaware, in the rich, rural Chteau Country centred upon the
powerful Du Pont family, chteau is used with its original definition. In Canada, especially in
English, chteau usually denotes a hotel, not a house, and applies only to the largest, most
elaborate railway hotelsbuilt in the Canadian Railroad golden age, such as the Chteau Lake Louise,
in Lake Louise, Alberta, the Chteau Laurier, in Ottawa, the Chteau Montebello, inMontebello, Quebec,
and the most famous Chteau Frontenac, in Quebec City.[7] Moreover, in other French-speaking
European regions, such as Wallonia(Belgium), the word Chteau is used with the same
definition. In Belgium, a strong French architectural influence is evident in the
seventeenth-century Chteau des Comtes de Marchin and the eighteenth-century Chteau de
Seneffe.