Maison de George Sand
Nohant, and its two period theatres
The property where George Sand lived and wrote, run by the Centre des monuments nationaux. Guided tour compulsory for the house, free access to the park.
The manor house dates from around 1770. Her grandmother bought it in the midst of the Terror, on 23 August 1793. Sand discovered it at the age of four, inherited it at seventeen, settled there for good in 1853, and died there on 8 June 1876.
She received Chopin there, who stayed from 1839 to 1846, as well as Liszt, Balzac, Delacroix, Flaubert and Turgenev.
What makes the place singular is the two theatres. A puppet theatre created in 1847, an actors' theatre opened in 1849. More than two hundred plays were performed there between 1850 and 1875. Maurice Sand, her son, carved the heads, painted the sets and sewed the costumes: a hundred and thirty puppets survive, with their costumes and mechanisms intact. No other French writer's house preserves this in place.
Bequeathed to the State in 1952, listed the same year. Holds the Maison des Illustres and Jardin remarquable labels.
Nine euros, free for under-eighteens. The five-hectare park is free to enter. The Chopin festival has been held there since 1966, from June to July.