Château de Verteuil

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Château de Verteuil-sur-Charente, built in 1080 by the La Rochefoucauld family, overlooks the Charente from a promontory described by Froissart as « un moult fort chasteau en Poictou sur les marches du Limousin et de la Saintonge ». Besieged as early as 1135, it hosted Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1137, then Philip VI, Francis I, Charles V and Henry II. Ceded to the English in 1361 under the Treaty of Brétigny, it was retaken by Charles VII in 1442 after the Hundred Years' War. It served as a Huguenot stronghold and hosted the sixth national Protestant synod in 1567, before being partially dismantled during the Fronde in 1650. It remained in the La Rochefoucauld family for nearly a thousand years and is famous for having preserved the seven tapestries of the Hunt of the Unicorn, probably woven for the marriage of Anne of Brittany to Louis XII. Rediscovered in 1850, where they were serving as farm covers, the tapestries were sold to John D. Rockefeller Jr in 1923 and joined the collection of The Cloisters museum in New York. The château, which served as the setting for the television film La Loi de Gloria (2017), was sold by the La Rochefoucauld family in July 2021.