We’ve been telling you for weeks now that you need to go forth and buy every piece of property out in Europe, chateau, country estates, castles, old manor houses and priory’s. We’ve given you the low down on which are the big European real estate agencies. If you’ve bothered to take our advice or even had some sort of a passing fancy then maybe you’ve perused the listings in various countries, inevitably you’ve come across various historic designations that the properties fall under. Here in the US we have an equal, whether it be on the National Register of Historic Places (national) or local, State or city. While the various designations in Europe might seem different they are more or less easily categorized and not too hard to figure out if you take a minute to read through them. We could do our own little summary here but feel that those who have come before us have probably done a better job.
The Website British Listed Buildings has an excellent catalog of those buildings, with a map and an explanation of the three separate tiers.
The next and easier resource, would be Wikipedia, didn’t think they would have the whole list did you? But they do have a better definition and history:
Listed Building Wikipedia Entry – it’s a bit long winded, but it does give you all the info you would need.
As for France and their designation Monument historique, much smaller and easier to digest – Monument Historique.