When the French gallerist Yves Gastou bought the Ermitage de Douce-amie — or refuge of a sweet friend — a follylike crenelated castle on the outskirts of Biarritz in southwest France, in 1990, it had the air of a place frozen in time. Hidden within a forest of bamboo and pine, bay and oak trees, the 5,380-square-foot house was built in 1900 as a retirement home for a member of the imperial court of Napoleon III, or so Gastou believed. The house had changed hands only a few times since: The woman from whom he purchased it was among the last ladies in Biarritz to travel by horse and cart. The hermitage was his summer hideaway, a place for monthslong vacations with family and friends. And if his Paris home was an expression of his appetite for modernity — it epitomized his eclectic tastes, with Cubist midcentury furniture by the French sculptor Philippe Hiquily and acrylic 1980s-era pieces by the Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata — the castle offered a retreat into the past.

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Persons: Yves Gastou, Douce, amie —, —, Napoleon III, Gastou, Philippe Hiquily, Shiro Kuramata Locations: Biarritz, France, Carcassonne, Limoux, Paris, French