Hauts LieuxChapels, sanctuaries & legends

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Legendary castleDordogne

Château de Puyguilhem

Villars

Dimensions
A main range flanked by two towers and a polygonal stair turret, a front with carved dormers that recalls the châteaux of the Loire, chimneypieces and details still Gothic. Inside, the great state room carries a relief of the twelve labours of Hercules. The park keeps a dovecote.
Period
Built from 1513 to 1535, in two campaigns (the first up to 1524, a date inscribed in the frieze of the stair turret).
What stands there
Classified as a monument historique on 20 March 1912, after a classification of 1881 revoked in 1887; the surroundings (woods and land) inscribed on 19 May 1945 (PA00083065). Property of the State since the expropriation of 1938, managed since February 2008 by the Centre des monuments nationaux.

Puyguilhem is a pleasure house of the early Renaissance, never designed for defence. On 14 May 1464 Jehan Flamenc did homage for "the noble house of Puyguilhem". Between 1509 and 1512 Pierre Mondot de La Marthonie, first president of the parlement of Guyenne and then first president of the Parlement of Paris on 3 February 1515, counsellor to Louise of Savoy and a close associate of François I, bought the estate from Jacques Muraut and Alzias Flamenc. He began the works in 1513 but died at Blois in 1517; his brother Gaston, bishop of Dax, carried them on for their nephew Geoffroy, and the work was completed in 1535. The castle then passed by marriage to the Chapt de Rastignac. Plundered and ruined in the 19th century, it was expropriated by the State in 1938 and then restored over some twenty years.

Further reading

Getting there : Open to visitors; admission €7 per person, free for under-18s and for European Union nationals from 18 to 25, hours varying with the season (Centre des monuments nationaux).

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

See it on the map OpenStreetMap Directions

Ambient sound

Château de Puyguilhem
Jacquym · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

In the same department

All places — Dordogne (80).