Château du Petit Perron

The site preserves a Renaissance country château in a Tuscan idiom arranged as three ranges that form a U around an inner service court, with a separate square pavilion at the northeast corner opening on a second formal court. The principal east front presents a ground‑level arcade with seven openings and two upper story galleries each with eight bays, the uppermost gallery finished with an iron balustrade that was probably renewed in the nineteenth century. Opposite, the west front that faces the inner court repeats the three‑tiered loggia arrangement, each level pierced by two wide basket‑handle arches and linked internally by a turning spiral stair; the main façades share similar columns and building materials.

On the ground floor of the east wing, at the north end of the main block, a large kitchen hearth remains in place and attests the original arrangement of service rooms. Inside, original exposed‑beam French‑style ceilings remain in some rooms, alongside painted wall decorations and a number of chimneys, one of which bears a painted coat of arms now poorly preserved and difficult to attribute. An external stone staircase, built in a quarter‑circle between the east façade and the enclosing wall beside the street, gives direct access from the central court to the first‑floor gallery and living apartments.

A separate small chapel appended to the south side of the principal building dates to 1748 and is incorporated into the main mass. In the formal court in front of the pavilion a pump of markedly different workmanship appears to have been fitted in the eighteenth century in the place of an earlier basin. Within the masonry of the complex there are visible traces and forms of towers and other defensive features that date to the sixteenth century and survive as structural fragments.

The gardens lie along the east and south faces and are terraced on two levels linked by two stone stairways. The upper terrace runs at the ground‑floor level around the building, and the lower terrace opens onto a lookout that affords views east across the Rhône valley, on clear days to Mont Blanc, south toward Irigny, and west toward Mont Pilat. Near the perimeter the modern stone cross installed in the nineteenth century marks a later alteration to the boundary landscape, while documentary record preserves the earlier existence of an iron boundary cross removed during the Revolution. The overall complex is conserved in a combination of original fabric, later repair, and targeted restoration.