Rochebrune Castle
The Château de Rochebrune is a moated castle from the 11th century in the French commune of Étagnac ( Charente department , Nouvelle-Aquitaine region ) . It forms the beginning of the Richard Löwenherz tourist route .
geography
The Château de Rochebrune is located on a small plateau at an altitude of 261 meters, 500 meters east of the center of Étagnac. It can be reached via the D 241 from Saint-Junien to Chabanais , which runs just 250 meters south . Another access is via the D 193 from Étagnac to Saulgond in the west. In the east, the Ruisseau de l'Étang drains to the Vienne , which flows past almost 4 kilometers further south at an altitude of 161 meters.
geology
The castle is located on the 305 million year old Chirac-Étagnac granite , a medium-grain biotite granite from the Upper Carboniferous . The contact with paragneiss of the upper gneiss cover of the Limousin runs directly along the east side of the castle . The foliation of these highly metamorphic rocks strikes southeast and dips quite steeply to the northeast. They are pushed onto the lower gneiss cover just 500 meters further south.
Building
The three side wings of the two-story castle form a north-north-east oriented rectangle measuring 43 × 36 meters, which is flanked by four round corner towers with a diameter of 9 meters. A water-filled, 5 to a maximum of 10 meters wide moat runs around the entire structure . The two-sided pointed roofs are now covered with slate, but were previously made of flat tiles. The cone-shaped roofs of the corner towers are pepper boxes ( French poivrières ). The fourth side wing closing the inner courtyard was demolished in 1808 and large window openings were built into the remaining wings. Inside, the coats of arms of the noble families Montluc and Rochechouart can be seen on a ceiling in the basement .
The facades and roofs of the castle, the moat and the outbuildings to the east have been registered as Monument historique since June 24, 1959 and are therefore under monument protection .
history
During the First Crusades , the Château de Rochebrune was an important fortified square of strategic importance, located at the intersection of the streets of Limoges , Angoulême and Niort .
Jourdain I. de Chabanais had the first tower built before he left for Jerusalem - where he died in 1099. The remaining three towers followed a century later. The wall thickness is two meters. The walls are provided with loopholes so that there were no blind spots for the defenders.
The descendants of Jourdain I then gradually expanded the building to its present size. During the Huguenot Wars , the Château de Rochebrune fell to the Catholic and arch-rival of the Protestants Blaise de Monluc in 1561 . At that time the castle, together with Chabanais and Confolens, formed a line of defense against the Protestants advancing from the south.
After a fire by the Protestants in 1569, Blaise de Montluc's daughter-in-law had windows built into the walls to brighten the building and make it really habitable. At that time, the masonry still supported a circular path for the security personnel connecting the four corner towers.
The castle then passed to the Escoubleau de Sourdis family by marriage. In the next generation, Angélique Charlotte d'Escoubleau de Sourdis from Chabanais married the Marquis de Saint-Pouange François Gilbert Colbert (1676-1719). On the occasion of the marriage contract, Louis XIV raised the lands around Chabanais to a marquisate in 1702 .
The Colbert Chabanais then had much larger windows installed. To make the castle more accessible, the former drawbridge was replaced by the current wide bridge in the 18th century.
In 1805, Comte Pierre Dupont de l'Étang , officer and general under Napoléon and commander of a military division during the Restoration , acquired the Château de Rochebrune. His offspring grandson left the castle to his cousin, the Comte de Richemont - ancestor of the current owner Henri de Richemont .
A park was created during the First Empire .
See also
literature
- Frédéric Chassebœuf: Châteaux en Poitou-Charentes . In: Prahecq, Patrimoines et Médias, coll. "Belles visites" . 2006, ISBN 2-910137-91-0 , pp. 173 .
Web links
- Château de Rochebrune in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
Coordinates: 45 ° 53 ′ 48 ″ N , 0 ° 47 ′ 14 ″ E