Château rental for family holidays, with several families or friends

Renting a castle for a family vacation is simpler than it seems: a large vacation home—with bedrooms, living rooms, a kitchen, and grounds—rented to a single family or a group of friends for a week. Our forty-five inhabited castles, estates, and manor houses are available for rent from Saturday to Saturday in the summer, and by the weekend the rest of the year. Sleeping 11 to 50 guests, with grounds ranging from 5 to 350 hectares, most feature a swimming pool, and the owners welcome you before leaving you to enjoy the house on your own. It’s the perfect castle to rent for several families, a family reunion, grandparents and their grandchildren—without anyone having to sleep in the living room.

A castle for rent for several families: accommodations for three generations

When it comes to group vacations, it all boils down to having a house that’s big enough. A château is a better fit than a large vacation rental: plenty of bedrooms spaced far apart, several living rooms so everyone can find their own space, a dining room where twenty-five people can dine together, and a kitchen designed for that purpose. The Château de Collanges accommodates 23 people—17 in the château, 6 in the guest house—; La Bijoire accommodates 25 on 40 hectares near the beaches of the Vendée; Les Louteaux accommodates 28 in the Bourbonnais; Les Boissières accommodates 26 near Uzès, complete with a sauna and air conditioning. For a vacation chateau with friends, the same property can accommodate ten couples; for families, the enclosed grounds and supervised pool are more important than the number of living rooms.

What’s Included in a Castle Rental, and How Much It Costs

The weekly rate covers the entire property, not just a single room: it includes accommodations for the entire group, utilities, linens, made-up beds, grounds and pool maintenance, and end-of-stay cleaning. Rate charts are published on each property listing, by season. For a week in the summer, expect to pay between €3,000 and €11,000 depending on the size of the château—€4,600 at Le Trioulou for 15 people, €7,200 at Collanges for 23, €9,800 at La Meynardie for 23, and €10,500 at La Bijoire for 25—or between €250 and €450 per person per week. That’s the price of a luxury vacation rental or three standard rentals combined—all in a single home where everyone stays together.

Castle Vacations in Ten Regions

The Southwest and the Périgord region are home to the largest number of houses, spread across the Dordogne, Lot, Aveyron, and Ariège departments; the West offers the Vendée and Anjou regions, just thirty minutes from the ocean; the Gard and the Var coast, with swimming pools and the sea; Auvergne, with its rivers and volcanoes; Normandy, Burgundy, and the châteaux of the Loire Valley—all just an hour by train from Paris, perfect for weeks of sightseeing. Each listing describes what’s nearby—markets, swimming spots, castles to visit—because when renting a castle for a group, the choice is as much about the region as it is about the accommodation itself.