Stand at the kitchen window on a Tuesday morning in October and watch mist lift slowly off your own private lake. The woodlands beyond it are turning amber. A heron stands perfectly still at the water's edge. There's no traffic, no neighbor noise — just the kind of quiet that city people pay a fortune trying to find for a week. Here, it's yours every day.
This nine-bedroom estate in Genouillé, a small commune in the Vienne department of Poitou-Charentes, sits on roughly 14 hectares of meadow, woodland, and water. It's not a property you stumble across. It's the kind of place that takes decades to assemble — the right land, the right buildings, the right bones — and rarely comes to market at anything close to this price point.
The main house anchors the estate with the kind of architectural weight that only comes with age. Stone walls that have stood for centuries, exposed timber beams overhead in the reception rooms, and four generous bedrooms, each with its own private shower room. That last detail matters more than it sounds: when you're hosting a family gathering or a group of friends from abroad, nobody's negotiating bathroom schedules. The layout is genuinely sociable. Wide reception areas open naturally for long lunches that drift into evenings, and the in-ground swimming pool just outside keeps things moving between meals and conversation.
Separate from the main house — properly separate, with its own front door and its own world — sits a fully independent gîte. Four to five bedrooms, a second swimming pool, and complete privacy from the main residence. This is where the property's income potential becomes very real, very quickly. The Poitou-Charentes region draws steady summer tourism, and well-presented rural ... click here to read more