Verneuil la Douce: Normandy's House of Art

2026-10-12 · By April Windsor

In: France · Hotels

Most of the people who stay here drive out from Paris on a Friday evening, an hour and a half west on the A12 to where Normandy runs out and the Perche begins. What they find is a red-brick house behind a gate that seven artists have painted from the stairwell to the floor of the swimming pool. Verneuil la douce calls itself a demeure d'art, a house of art. The woman who owns it drew the furniture herself. It opened in October 2025 in a town founded in 1120 to guard the border of Normandy.

I would never have imagined opening a hotel one day. And then, one morning it was obvious.

THE HOUSE

The house was built in 1886 for the Benedictine nuns of the Abbaye Saint-Nicolas, who lodged visiting families in it, and a compass rose in mosaic still greets you at the door. It became a hotel in 1961, the Hostellerie du Clos, run by the Simon family for the next four decades and a Relais & Châteaux member from 1975, the place where parents of pupils at the École des Roches, the boarding school on the edge of town, took them to Sunday lunch; from 2007 it traded as Le Clos, until the sale in 2022. It has the things an Anglo-Norman house of its period was built to show off: a pepper-pot turret in flamed brick, a chequerboard façade with false machicolations, and a suspended oak staircase in the manner of Viollet-le-Duc.

Camille Agnès Omerin took the company over in June 2022 and spent two and a half years on the renovation. She had come from fashion, with years at Chloé and other Paris houses before she founded her own label, Maison Père, in 2014, and the label had already drifted into furniture and interiors before the hotel came along. There is no architect or design studio of record here. She drew the dining chairs and the headboards and much else, had vases and wall lamps made to her designs by a ceramics workshop, and chose the artists one by one. The best of what she kept is the glasshouse, iron and glass in the Eiffel manner, which the hotel calls the Glassroom: the tea room by day and a bar until eleven at night, with Ségolène Derudder's four seasons looking down from the roof and a line of poetry painted into the frescoes, J'aime ton exquise âme unique. Asked once what a guest should take away from the house, Omerin said: “Definitely the daylight coming through the glass roof. The play of light at every hour is fantastic.” The result has seventeen rooms, a restaurant and a painted pool, with a second pool and the spa due at the end of October, and a history Omerin is writing up as a book.

THE ARTISTS

The brief to each was a wall, or a floor, and the run of the house. Ségolène Derudder, an illustrator who works between Biarritz and Paris and paints frescoes, took the largest share: the four seasons as Greek gods and goddesses across the glasshouse ceiling, the two dining rooms, and lines of poetry painted straight onto the bedroom walls. On the dining-room ceiling there is a blue-haired cherub playing the violin. Margot Gillot, who mixes her own paints from lime and casein the way fresco painters did before tins existed, made a different picture in every bathroom. Ben Arpéa painted the floor of the outdoor pool, a landscape he calls A Spring in Normandy. Alice Louradour did the same for the indoor pool in bright geometry. Celeste, a duo from Mexico City, filled the curved stairwell over two floors with a desert landscape called Hacia el vacío. Hermentaire, the painting name of Damien de Medeiros, took the spa, and Kimmy Quillin, a New York painter, the orangery.

“I hate conformism, looking like everyone else,” Omerin said last winter. “It was obvious to me that I had to stand out, that everything should be singular, from the washbasin to the teaspoon.”

THE ROOMS

There are seventeen, split between the main house and an annexe, and no two are the same. Palette rooms run from twenty to twenty-nine square metres with king beds; Rêverie suites from thirty-five to fifty, with a sitting room and, in some, bunk beds for children; Eden suites, thirty to thirty-seven square metres, come with a conservatory, and one is fully accessible. Two fifty-square-metre family suites take four, Écrin in the main house with bunk beds and Lyrique in the annexe with two doubles, and a pair of connecting rooms in the annexe can be joined. There are no televisions in any of them, on purpose, and a projector if you ask. Book an Eden suite for the sunroom, or a Rêverie for the sitting room and a door to shut on the children. Derudder's verses turn up on bedroom walls across the house; ask for one.

THE TABLE

Patiné, the restaurant, sits in two rooms with the mouldings and angel bas-reliefs of the old house and fireplaces in pink and red marble. Cyril Coutin cooks. He came through the Trianon Palace at Versailles and Marc Meneau's L'Espérance at Vézelay, and he and his wife Lucie already run their own restaurant, Le Madeleine, a few streets away in the town. On Saturday mornings he shops the Verneuil market on the church square and builds the day's dish from what he finds. “Normandy is so rich in its diverse and varied agriculture, from the sea to the land,” he says.

The gastronomic menu runs Thursday and Friday nights, Saturday lunch and dinner and Sunday night, by reservation. Sunday lunch is a brunch from midday with a pianist. The rest of the time there is Esquisse Gourmande, a short menu of oysters, salmon, salads and cheese with the house focaccia, served all day, every day, without booking.

THE SPA AND THE GARDEN

The garden is old cedars and two-hundred-year-old plane trees, and the outdoor pool, open in summer, sits under them with Arpéa's spring on its floor. Indoors there is a pool with glass doors onto a terrace, a hammam, a wooden sauna and a treatment room run with the French brand Holidermie, the whole wing painted by Hermentaire with his invented tribe. The hotel calls it the Spa des Songes, the spa of dreams, and it has been a while coming: the indoor pool was promised for spring 2026 and the hotel now says the end of October. If the spa matters to your dates, ask before you book.

THE TOWN

Verneuil-sur-Avre was founded in 1120 by Henry I, son of William the Conqueror, to hold the line of the Avre against France, and it did until Philippe Auguste took Normandy in 1204 and put up the Tour Grise, a keep of local brown stone called grison, to keep an eye on his new town. The Madeleine church grew a Flamboyant Gothic tower, fifty-six metres and 212 steps, finished around 1525 and visible from the fields for miles. In August 1424 the English won a battle on the plain north of town that they called a second Agincourt. Since 1893 springs of the Avre valley at Verneuil have been piped to Paris as drinking water. Beyond the town is the Perche, hills, bocage and manor houses, with its own cider appellation since 2020 and the boudin fair at Mortagne in March.

The Verdict

Go now for the house, the walls and the table, and after October for the spa. This is a real house with a real history, an owner who made every decision herself, and seven artists who were given the walls. Drive out on Friday, book an Eden suite, eat at Patiné on the Saturday, stay for the Sunday brunch under the glass roof, and drive back when it is over.

GETTING THERE & WHEN TO GO

By car it is about an hour and a half from Paris on the A12 and then the N12 towards Dreux and Alençon, with parking and four electric chargers at the house. If you would rather not drive, direct TER trains run from Paris-Montparnasse to Verneuil-sur-Avre in about an hour and ten minutes, and the hotel is a quarter of an hour on foot or five minutes by taxi from the station; Sunday trains back are thin, with the first afternoon departure after four. The hotel closed from mid-January to early February this year, so check before booking a winter date. Late spring and September are the months to aim for, with the outdoor pool open and the glasshouse at its best in the long light.

The Details Verneuil la douce 98 rue de la Ferté, 27130 Verneuil d'Avre et d'Iton, Eure, Normandy, France Owner: Camille Agnès Omerin; opened October 2025; member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World Rooms: 17 rooms and suites across the main house and annexe: Palette rooms, Rêverie, Eden, Écrin and Lyrique suites; no televisions Dining: Patiné (chef Cyril Coutin; Thursday to Sunday, reservation), Esquisse Gourmande all day, Sunday brunch with pianist, the Glassroom for tea and cocktails until 11pm Spa: Indoor pool, hammam, sauna, Holidermie treatment room (Spa des Songes due end of October 2026); outdoor pool in summer Getting there: 1h10 by direct TER from Paris-Montparnasse; about 1h30 by car Season: Year-round except a winter closure, mid-January to early February in 2026 Rates: On request Website: verneuilladoucehotel.com