Photo : Thérèse Gaigé / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Châteaux de Bruniquel
Bruniquel, in the Tarn-et-Garonne, was originally a castle built to watch over the valley road from the Quercy to the Albigeois. A village grew up beside it and became a prosperous town, as the houses of its notables show.
Within the 13th-century ramparts, on either side of a 12th-century keep, two buildings have stood side by side since the enclosure was divided between two rival cousins in 1484. The Old Castle, on medieval foundations, has a Renaissance residence. Burned during the Wars of Religion, it was altered in the 17th century and in the 19th, when the daring gallery overlooking the precipice was built. The Young Castle, built between 1484 and 1510, keeps the stern look of a fortress despite interior changes, windows opened in the 17th and 18th centuries and an elegant carved doorway added in 1683 at the foot of its staircase. With their rich past, the village and the castles, owned by the commune since 1987, are an emblem of the Tarn-et-Garonne.
