Azay-le-Ferron is a commune

Communes of France

The commune is the lowest level of administrative division in the French Republic. French communes are roughly equivalent to incorporated municipalities or villages in the United States or Gemeinden in Germany...

 in the Indre

Indre

Indre is a department in the center of France named after the river Indre. The inhabitants of the department are called Indriens.-History:Indre is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...

 department in central France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

.

It is situated in the parc naturel régional de la Brenne

Parc naturel régional de la Brenne

The Parc naturel régional de la Brenne is an large Parc naturel régional located in the Indre of France. It was founded December 22, 1982. Of old, La Brenne was a region in the old French provinces of Berry and Touraine, west of Châteauroux and east of Tournon-Saint-Martin.The park is cut in two...

, spanning parts of the historic pays of Berry

Berry (province)

Berry is a region located in the center of France. It was a province of France until the provinces were replaced by départements on 4 March 1790....

 and Touraine

Touraine

The Touraine is one of the traditional provinces of France. Its capital was Tours. During the political reorganization of French territory in 1790, the Touraine was divided between the departments of Indre-et-Loire, :Loir-et-Cher and Indre.-Geography:...

. Azay-Le-Ferron takes its name from ironworks, from which iron was extracted as late as the nineteenth century, and a deformation of aqua, "water".
The Château d'Azay-le-Ferron

Château d'Azay-le-Ferron

The Château d'Azay-le-Ferron is a fifteenth-century castle and seventeenth-century manor located in the Commune of Azay-le-Ferron in the Indre Department of France. It also features a Garden à la française and a French landscape garden dating to the seventeenth century, redone in the nineteenth and...

, upon which the ancient commune depended, ranges from fifteenth century construction — the round tower — to eighteenth century, harmonized by the warm stone of which it is built and the blue-gray slates of its various roofs. The ancestral seat of the family Hersent Luzarche, bequeathed to the city of Tours

Tours

Tours is a city in central France, the capital of the Indre-et-Loire department.It is located on the lower reaches of the river Loire, between Orléans and the Atlantic coast. Touraine, the region around Tours, is known for its wines, the alleged perfection of its local spoken French, and for the...

 in 1951, now houses a collection of furniture, both of the French Renaissance

French Renaissance

French Renaissance is a recent term used to describe a cultural and artistic movement in France from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in northern Italy in the fourteenth century...

 and in Empire style. It is surrounded by a series of parterre

Parterre

A parterre is a formal garden construction on a level surface consisting of planting beds, edged in stone or tightly clipped hedging, and gravel paths arranged to form a pleasing, usually symmetrical pattern. Parterres need not have any flowers at all...

 gardens, some with clipped topiary

Topiary

Topiary is the horticultural practice of training live perennial plants, by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, perhaps geometric or fanciful; and the term also refers to plants which have been shaped in this way. It can be...

, and a landscaped park.

Demographics