In the inner courtyard, which is not open to visitors, grows a black elder about 250 years old: a listed monumental tree, and reason enough to stop and look at the Bovet fortified house from outside, in the hamlet of Le Pont.
What to see
The building is a solid quadrangular stone structure of four floors, its perimeter walls strengthened by stone buttresses. The old entrance, on the north front, has an arch whose lintel is carved with an inverted keel, and above it projects a defensive element with an arrow slit. On the same front, partly blocked up, you can pick out a decorated stone window, a fifteenth-century two-light window and a four-light one. Two more projecting defensive elements face the Mont Blanc side.
Visiting
Inside, an imposing spiral staircase in stone and wood climbs three floors; it is the part that says most about how life worked in a fortified house, halfway between defence and dwelling.
Our editors' tip
Take your time over the north front: the blocked windows tell you more than any panel, because they show where the house opened up and where it decided to close again.