Definition of "châteaux"

Few cottages, no châteaux, hardly any inhabitants, were to be seen; it seemed as if we were reaching the very end of the world.

1877 September 15, F.P. Verney, “Pictures in Holland, on and off Canvas”, in Littell’s Living Age, volume 134, number 1735

Villages and woods, meadows and châteaux, pass across the moving scene, out of which the whistling of locomotives throws sharp notes.

1904, Alberto Santos-Dumont, My Airships, page 15

When royalty and nobility built châteaux throughout this valley during the Renaissance, sumptuousness was uppermost in their minds.

2004, Alexis Lipsitz Flippin et al., Frommer’s Europe, page 329