Photo : Selbymay / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Château de Vincennes
The Château de Vincennes, east of Paris, is presented as the largest royal fortified castle preserved in France. The site was first a royal hunting lodge under Louis VII, then was fortified from 1337 under Philip VI. Charles V, born here in 1338, had a rectangular enclosure of more than a kilometre raised between 1372 and 1380, flanked by six towers 42 metres high and pierced by three gates. The keep, about 50 metres high, also dates from the fourteenth century.
The Sainte-Chapelle was begun in 1379 and completed under Henry II by Philibert Delorme, who inaugurated it in 1552. The King's and Queen's pavilions were built by Louis Le Vau in the seventeenth century. After Louis XIV left for Versailles around 1670, the keep served as a state prison, where Sade, Mirabeau and Voltaire, among others, were held. The castle now houses the Service historique de la Défense.
