Everyone, young and old, knows the Château de Rigny-Ussé – it is Sleeping Beauty’s castle. High in her tower, the princess sleeps the deepest of sleeps that not even the crowds of tourists filing past her bedside can disturb.

Ask a German and you will be told that Sleeping Beauty was written by the Brothers Grimm. This is true, but the first person to put the tale on paper, inspired by this château, was the French writer Charles Perrault. Perrault’s story was taken to Germany by an acquaintance, Dorothea Viehmann, a French-born German lady who had heard his Sleeping Beauty. Back in Germany, Mrs Viehmann told the story to anyone who would listen, until, one day, it fell upon the ears of the Brothers Grimm, who used it as the basis for their Dornöschen. A Franco-German tale that was born on the banks of the Loire