Nouvelle-Aquitaine

Nouvelle-Aquitaine · Dordogne

Château de Hautefort

Rebuilt 1630–1670 on medieval foundations · 17th-century classical (rare for Périgord)

A slice of Loire-style classical grandeur transplanted into the Périgord, rebuilt in the 17th century on the site of the fortress of the troubadour Bertran de Born. Gutted by fire in August 1968 and heroically restored by Simone David-Weill, Baroness de Bastard. Its formal gardens are a 19th-century design by the Count de Choulot — not, as often repeated, by André Le Nôtre.

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Nouvelle-Aquitaine · Vienne

Château de Purnon

1779–1788 (estate works from 1772) · Louis XVI neoclassical

A remarkably intact Louis XVI château near the village of Verrue, gazing north over the forest of Scévolles, with tuffeau-stone outbuildings, a chapel, the Moulin Bigeard and a rare Éolienne Bollée wind pump. Purchased in 2020 by Australians Tim Holding and Felicity Selkirk, it is now the subject of one of France's largest private restorations.

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Nouvelle-Aquitaine · Dordogne

Château de Beynac

12th century onwards · Medieval clifftop fortress

One of the four great baronies of Périgord, planted on a sheer cliff 150 metres above the Dordogne. Richard the Lionheart briefly held it; through the Hundred Years' War it stared down English-held Castelnaud directly across the river — two fortresses locked in a century of glaring.

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Nouvelle-Aquitaine · Dordogne

Château de Castelnaud

12th–13th centuries · Medieval fortress

Beynac's great rival across the Dordogne, held for long stretches by the English during the Hundred Years' War. Today it houses the Museum of Medieval Warfare, complete with full-scale reconstructed siege engines — its trebuchets are among the best-known in Europe.

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Nouvelle-Aquitaine · Dordogne

Château des Milandes

1489 · Late Gothic–Renaissance manor

The Caumont family's refined 15th-century manor became world-famous as the home of Josephine Baker, who lived here from 1947 to 1968 and raised her twelve adopted children — the 'Rainbow Tribe'. Decorated Resistance agent, star and civil-rights campaigner, Baker entered the Panthéon in 2021; Les Milandes tells her story.

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Nouvelle-Aquitaine · Pyrénées-Atlantiques

Château de Pau

12th–16th centuries; restored 19th c. · Medieval fortress turned Renaissance palace

Birthplace of Henri IV in 1553 — the future king rocked, tradition insists, in a single great turtle shell still shown today. Fortress of Gaston Fébus, palace of the kings of Navarre, restored as a shrine to 'the good king' under Louis-Philippe and Napoleon III, with sweeping views to the Pyrenees.

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Nouvelle-Aquitaine · Lot-et-Garonne

Château de Bonaguil

13th century; transformed 1480–1530 · The last of the great fortified castles

The magnificent anachronism: rebuilt on the eve of the Renaissance as the ultimate medieval fortress — every artillery-age defence bolted onto chivalric architecture — by the proud and litigious Bérenger de Roquefeuil. It was never once attacked. Perfect, and perfectly useless, it survives almost intact.

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Nouvelle-Aquitaine · Haute-Vienne

Château de Montbrun

12th century; rebuilt 15th century · Medieval castle with water mirror

A textbook medieval silhouette doubled in its own moat-lake at Dournazac, in the chestnut country of the Périgord-Limousin park — emphatically not the Loire Valley, whatever the internet keeps repeating. Crusader-era origins, a 12th-century keep, and a 15th-century rebuild after the Hundred Years' War.

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Nouvelle-Aquitaine · Dordogne

Château de Biron

12th–18th centuries · Eight centuries of styles on one hill

One of the four baronies of Périgord, held by the Gontaut-Biron family for a scarcely believable eight hundred years — every century adding its wing, from crusader keep to Renaissance chapel to classical apartments. The result is a whole history of French architecture piled on a single Dordogne hilltop.

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Nouvelle-Aquitaine · Dordogne

Château de Commarque

12th–14th centuries (over prehistoric site) · 'Forgotten fortress' castrum

The 'forgotten fortress' of the Beune valley: a whole medieval village-castle swallowed by forest for four centuries, being patiently uncovered since 1968 by Hubert de Commarque, descendant of its founders. Beneath the keep, a prehistoric cave with carved horses — 15,000 years of occupation on one rock.

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Nouvelle-Aquitaine · Creuse

Château de Chaumont (Creuse)

1886 · 19th-century château, under rebirth

Built in 1886 for an opera singer, wartime sanctuary where the OSE sheltered more than two hundred Jewish refugee children, gutted by fire in the 1980s — and since 2022 the one-man rebuild of Dan Preston, whose Escape to Rural France channel documents every beam of its resurrection.

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