When we purchased Château de Gudanes, floors remained in only three of the building's ninety-four rooms. Before any restoration could begin, roughly 500 tonnes of rubble had to be cleared from inside the house so that it could be put back together, room by room.

The first stage of work was structural: reinstalling floors, walls and ceilings so the building was safe to stand in. A Catalonian construction team travelled from Barcelona, and twelve men rebuilt the Château over twelve months, working through every season, including snow.

Because the Château is a Class I Historical Monument, every stage of work — no matter how small — must first be recorded, investigated and submitted to the Monuments Historiques, the French government body that oversees changes to historic buildings, and the Château's own restoration team includes architects and artisans from that same body. Alongside them work professional restorers from France, Italy and England, sharing the best current practice in restoration, conservation and preservation as the house comes back to life, layer by layer — including the careful removal of later cream paint to reveal original eighteenth-century frescoes underneath.

Almost every day of restoration brings a new discovery, drawing us closer to unravelling the memories held in the Château's silence. Among the finds so far:

• Hand-painted Renaissance frescoes and painted beams, hidden for generations under later layers of paint
• Fragments of antique Venetian glassware, ceramics and pottery
• A tunnel leading deep below ground, still only partly explored
• Wax seals from the French Revolution, still intact on centuries-old walnut doors
• Eighteenth-century painted walls, discovered beneath later wooden panelling