Photo : Paul Hermans / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Château de Picquigny
The castle of Picquigny, in the Somme, is a ruined fortress overlooking the Somme valley between Amiens and Abbeville. It controlled the river crossing and levied tolls on it.
Burned by Charles the Bold in 1470, it was rebuilt and remodelled in the Renaissance. Madame de Sévigné stayed here in 1689 and gave her name to the Sévigné pavilion. The d'Albert de Chaulnes family owned it from 1681 to 1774; seized as national property in 1795, it was ruined by 1818 and used as a stone quarry. Listed as a historic monument in 1906, it was bequeathed in 1912 to the Société des antiquaires de Picardie, which sold it in 2013 to a private owner.
Visitors can see a trapezoidal curtain wall more than fifty metres long along the river, an underground kitchen, two fortified gates, the Sévigné pavilion and the collegiate church of Saint-Martin. Medieval festivals have been held here since 2005.
