Massive keeps, crenellated curtain walls and double enclosures: before being pleasure residences, fortified castles were first of all war machines, designed to withstand sieges.
This selection honours medieval military architecture at its most spectacular, from the largest fortress in Europe at Sedan to the ramparts of the city of Carcassonne, via the masterpieces of Viollet-le-Duc.
Places that tell as much about the history of sieges and feudal wars as about the later story of the romantic restoration of medieval heritage in the nineteenth century.
It is from the modern bridge spanning the Aude that you should discover the city of Carcassonne. And if possible when the setting sun tints with golden-glinting pinkish grey its geometry, both elegant and complex.
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The Château de Pierrefonds was built in the fifteenth century by Louis d'Orléans and then dismantled on the orders of Louis XIII.
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A royal residence from the twelfth to the eighteenth century, the Château de Vincennes has kept its enclosure, medieval towers, the fourteenth-century keep and the Sainte-Chapelle with its sixteenth-century stained glass.
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The castle occupies the summit of a rocky spur. It communicated with the fortified town by a gate squeezed between two cylinders.
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Built in the fifteenth century and listed as a historic monument, the Sedan fortress is the largest medieval castle in Europe, with its 35,000 m² of area on seven levels.
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The castle of the counts of Foix, with its high walls and three towers, stands at the confluence of the Arget and the Ariège on an imposing rocky peak that overlooks the medieval town of Foix and offers a fine panoramic view of the Pyrenean landscape.
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The most beautiful fortress in France: a castle of the thirteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, listed as a Historic Monument.
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Fortified from the eleventh century, the castle was originally built on a rocky promontory emerging from a marsh.
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Overlooking the town, the fortress built by the count of Blois, Theobald I, evokes the time when the histories of France and England were intimately intertwined: the Court of Henry II Plantagenet and Eleanor of Aquitaine settled there in the twelfth century.
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This colossus of tuffeau and slate piles up superlatives: 17 towers, a kilometre of walls, 1,000 years of history, plenty of activities and the largest medieval tapestry in the world.
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