Bastide de Molières et son château fort

Molières

Between Cadouin and Beaumont, on the hills of the Périgord pourpre, Molières is the unfinished bastide. Founded in 1284 by the seneschal Jean de Grailly at the request of Edward I, on land given in 1272 by Guillaume de Biron, lord of Montferrand, and in paréage with the abbey of Cadouin, it was to be laid out in a grid around a square fifty-five metres a side. A single house with arcaded corners, the maison du Bayle, remains at the south-west corner of the square, beside a vast church of the 14th century with a single nave and the ruins of the castle begun after 1314 by Guilhem de Toulouse, seneschal of the Périgord, of which the enclosure and a square keep survive, which tradition calls the château de la Reine Blanche. The village, today of some 340 inhabitants, offers the sight of a bastide that remained a project.

The unfinished castle. The bastide of Molières was founded in the 13th century and received after 1314, under Edward II of England, a castle intended to serve as its citadel. Nothing survives of it but ruins: continuous walls, the beginnings of four round corner towers and, in the middle of the enclosure, a square keep left standing alone. The building was listed as a monument historique (inscribed) on 12 October 1948. It is to this keep that the legend of the queen Blanche attaches, who is said to have been shut up and poisoned there — a tradition that the monument's heritage record itself mentions.

Getting there : Village freely accessible. Weekly market on Wednesday in the late afternoon. Remains situated within the bastide of Molières; no organised opening for visits is known. To be checked with the town hall or the tourist office of the Pays de Bergerac.

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

Ambient sound