Château Gaillard (Les Andelys)

Château Gaillard is a ruined fortress overlooking the Seine valley at Les Andelys, in the Eure. Richard the Lionheart had it built in 1197 and 1198 on a limestone spur 90 or 100 metres above the river, in order to control the Seine and defend Normandy against the expansion of the King of France. The building site cost about 46,000 livres, or nearly five years of the duchy's revenues.

After Richard's death, Philip Augustus besieged the castle for six months. Despite an innovative design, it fell on 6 March 1204, and this loss marked the end of Plantagenet rule over Normandy. The castle later housed famous prisoners: in 1314, two daughters-in-law of Philip the Fair were locked up there during the Tour de Nesle affair. Taken and retaken during the Hundred Years' War, it was partly dismantled under Henry IV, between 1591 and 1603.

You can see a circular keep with pyramid-shaped buttresses and an elliptical inner enclosure with scalloped towers, designed to eliminate blind spots. Listed as a historic monument in 1862, the site receives about 120,000 visitors a year, who also come for the panorama over the loop of the Seine.

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