Built between 1847 and 1854, Château de Challain is one of the great flourishes of the Neo-Gothic Troubadour style, designed by René Hodé, the architect behind many of Anjou's most romantic nineteenth-century châteaux. It was commissioned by Louise-Ida Le Roy de La Potherie and her husband François Albert de La Rochefoucauld, Comte de Bayers, who built it to restore their family's standing in the decades after the French Revolution. Sixty metres long, with tuffeau-stone rooflines rising to around forty-five metres across nearly 120 rooms, it earned a lasting nickname: the "Petit Chambord", the little Chambord of Anjou. Listed as a Monument Historique, the château is today owned by the Nicholson family, who run it as an exclusive-use setting for a small number of weddings each year.