Château de Meung-sur-Loire

Meung-sur-Loire

Overlooking the Loire from the heart of the little town of Meung-sur-Loire, the château was the fortified residence of the bishops of Orléans for six centuries. A first tower, built against the bell tower of the collegiate church, rose in the mid-12th century; from 1209, Bishop Manassès de Seignelay had a larger castle built, rectangular in plan with four corner towers and equipped with underground dungeons reputed to be fearsome. It was in one of these episcopal prisons that the poet François Villon, arrested for theft, spent the summer of 1461 awaiting an execution narrowly averted by the passage of King Louis XI, an episode he recounts in his famous Epistle to his Friends. On 14 June 1429, Joan of Arc and the royal troops retook the fortress from the English, a few weeks after the lifting of the siege of Orléans. In the 18th century, Bishop Fleuriau d'Armenonville turned the place into an elegant classical residence, erasing part of the medieval defences without doing away with keep and curtain walls. Now a museum, the château retains this dual face of fortress and palace, and its past as a place of justice and imprisonment still feeds local memory of a site where accursed poets, powerful prelates and a warrior maiden crossed paths.

Getting there : Museum open to paying visitors in the centre of Meung-sur-Loire, gardens freely accessible

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound