Château de Mercuret

En un regard

Le château en bref

Mercuret Castle, in Retournac (Haute-Loire), is a fortified manor house whose origins date back to the fifteenth century. Its rectangular main building is enlivened by two half-projecting towers and four corner bartizans, while a round tower stands outside the curtain wall. To the east, a chapel combines a round tower, first used as an oratory and later as a bread oven, with a nave added in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Inside, the following survive: French-style coffered ceilings, painted wooden decoration, mural paintings and fireplaces. The building was remodelled in the eighteenth century; three of its towers were demolished in 1793. Broken up through sales in the nineteenth century, it belonged in the 1940s to the hospices of Retournac. Privately owned, the main building with its interior decoration, two towers of the outer curtain wall and the lower courtyard are listed as a monument historique by order of 25 November 1994.