House of George Sand

The house at Nohant in the Berry region of central France was the family home of Aurore Dupin — George Sand — and remained her true base throughout her life. From here she wrote more than eighty novels, numerous plays, and thousands of letters; it was here too that she received Frédéric Chopin, Flaubert, and Turgenev. The house retains the atmosphere of a working country home rather than a formal monument.

The house is particularly notable for its Romantic-era interiors — the salon where Chopin played, the puppet theatre Sand created for her grandchildren, and the garden she tended are all preserved with care. The influence of Sand's personality — warm, prolific, profoundly rooted in the countryside — pervades every room.

Visiting Nohant rewards a full morning or afternoon. The village is unchanged and the Berry landscape, with its gentle hills and hedgerows, is precisely the countryside of Sand's pastoral novels. Allow two hours for the house and gardens.