The town is surrounded by a girdle wall and moat. For each corner the King's architects, Jacques Lemercier and his brothers, designed a corner pavilion to act as symbolic guard towers to the New Town contained within. Today the most conspicuous pavilions are on the SW and NW corners, as they can be seen from the main road as it passes the town. While the SW pavilion is in good condition - it is now a house accessed from a street just within the walls - the NW pavilion is in a isolated, stranded location and in bad condition. It is isolated by being in the extreme NW corner of the part of the town that was originally the site of the Cardinal's nun's convent. This is also explains why the moat beyond the wall in this direction is open ground, rather than being infilled with garden encroachments from the houses constructed against the town's walls, as elsewhere on the perimeter. If the building's problem of access could be resolved, this corner pavilion that forms such a prominent part of the visitor's first impression of the town could easily be restored and put to use. It certainly is a pretty little building and completely original to the inception of the town in the 1630s.
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