Its white facade bathes in light that comes directly from the south and is reflected by the river, the brick cornices, the Moorish arches that outline windows and doors, the turret positioned elegantly as a look-out post, all these naturally invite you to look out over the town and river and dream of travel and escape. If the writer did not actually live here, he did come very regularly to this Loire hillside where the Verne family’s country house can still be seen very close by.
And as Julien Gracq wrote, he “must have come here often to look out over the river from on high, here where it becomes the doorway to the open sea and the way to adventure”. In this very special setting, “the very curious Jules Verne” makes himself known to us little by little through objects from his daily life, the manuscripts written in his hand which allow us to follow line by line how the “Extraordinary voyages” evolved and the many byproducts inspired by his storytelling powers and the fame of his works. You will therefore get to know not only the man who predicted the submarine and the conquest of outer space but also the man for whom writing was “the only source of true happiness”.
