Aix les bains is located about 25 miles (40 km) from the chateau.

At the heart of the Savoie Olympic region, Aix-les-Bains is situated on the edge of the Le lake Bourget, the largest natural lake in France. This freshwater sea is home to about fifty varieties of fish. Many water sports such as swimming, diving and sailing, are available in a water which reaches 25° C (about  77 Fahrenheit) in summer.

Mont Revard at a height of 1550 meters, dominates the town and offers a panoramic view of Mont Blanc. Its paths and marked cross-country skiing runs are used by sportspeople, walkers and cyclists.

Aix-les-Bains, besides being the second busiest spa town in France welcomes you to its exceptional surroundings with an 18 hole golf course, horse racingtrack and casinos.

Inaugurated in 1850 by King Victor Emmanuel II, the Casino Grand Cercle was devoted to pleasure from the outset : conversation, reading, listening to music and dancing but, above all, to gambling. Initially a modest gambling room with a foldaway theatre, by the end of the XIX century, it had become the central meeting point of the town.

Competition from a new casino obliged the Grand Cercle to add several drawing rooms, a romantic theatre "à la française" and a restaurant. A great Venetian mosaic artist, Antonio Salviati, who restored the Saint-Marc Basilica and worked with Charles Granier on the Paris Opera building, covered the ceilings with splendid mosaics on a gold background. 3,500,000 small cubes of glass were used to create this wonderful work of art, held together by 25 metric tons of mortar. Wonderful balls were held under Salviati's allegorical figures (the four seasons, the four elements and the twelve signs of the Zodiac) that where said to be the most elegant of their time. Then the theatre, which had become too small, was transformed into the lobby of a much larger theatre built by the architect, Henri Eustache. Another artist, Cavaillé-Coll, continued the ceiling decorations, but this time with brighter colors. If you go to the Grand Cercle to gamble, look in the Salon Baccarat - you will see a painting which shows the impact of a bullet fired by an unlucky player !