Azay-le-Ferron () is a

commune A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or comune or other derivations may also refer to: Administrative-territorial entities * Commune (administrative division), a municipality or township ** Communes of ...

in the Indre department in central

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

. It is situated in the

parc naturel régional de la Brenne The parc naturel régional de la Brenne (; ) is an large regional nature park located in the French department of Indre, France. It was founded December 22, 1982. Of old, ''La Brenne'' was a region in the old French provinces of Berry and Tour ...

, spanning parts of the historic province of Berry and

Touraine Touraine (; ) is one of the traditional provinces of France. Its capital was Tours. During the political reorganization of French territory in 1790, Touraine was divided between the departments of Indre-et-Loire, :Loir-et-Cher, Indre and Vien ...

. Azay-Le-Ferron takes its name from ironworks, from which iron was extracted as late as the nineteenth century, and a deformation of ''aqua'', "water". The

Château d'Azay-le-Ferron Château d'Azay-le-Ferron is a 15th-century castle and 17th-century manor located in the ''commune'' of Azay-le-Ferron in the Indre ''département'' of France. It features a garden ''à la française'' and a French landscape garden dating to the ...

, upon which the ancient commune depended, ranges from fifteenth century construction—the round tower—to eighteenth century, harmonized by the warm stone of which it is built and the blue-gray slates of its various roofs. The ancestral seat of the family Hersent Luzarche, bequeathed to the city of

Tours Tours ( , ) is one of the largest cities in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the prefecture of the department of Indre-et-Loire. The commune of Tours had 136,463 inhabitants as of 2018 while the population of the whole metro ...

in 1951, now houses a collection of furniture, both of the

French Renaissance The French Renaissance was the cultural and artistic movement in France between the 15th and early 17th centuries. The period is associated with the pan-European Renaissance, a word first used by the French historian Jules Michelet to define th ...

and in

Empire style The Empire style (, ''style Empire'') is an early-nineteenth-century design movement in architecture, furniture, other decorative arts, and the visual arts, representing the second phase of Neoclassicism. It flourished between 1800 and 1815 durin ...

. It is surrounded by a series of

parterre A ''parterre'' is a part of a formal garden constructed on a level substrate, consisting of symmetrical patterns, made up by plant beds, low hedges or coloured gravels, which are separated and connected by paths. Typically it was the part of ...

gardens, some with clipped

topiary Topiary is the horticultural practice of training perennial plants by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, whether geometric or fanciful. The term also refers to plants w ...

, and a landscaped park.

Population

See also