Château de La Fère

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Château de La Fère, in the Aisne, succeeds a feudal fortified castle built by the lords of Coucy, who controlled the region from the 11th to the 14th century. The seigneury then passed by marriage to the Bar and later the Luxembourg families. Marie de Luxembourg, Countess of Vendôme, had a Renaissance château built on this site between the 15th and 16th centuries. Her daughter-in-law Françoise d'Alençon, Duchess of Vendôme, gave birth there to seven children, including Antoine de Bourbon, father of the future Henry IV, born in 1518. Francis I stayed there during the Cambrai peace negotiations, and Marie de Luxembourg died there in April 1547. The estate was attached to the Crown from 1596, then belonged to Cardinal Mazarin and his nephew in the 17th century, before passing in 1766 into the appanage of the Duke of Orléans. Of the Renaissance building, originally composed of four wings around a square courtyard, only the north wing survives today, housing a remarkable Flamboyant Gothic hall. Converted into an artillery school in the 19th century and later into officers' quarters, the château now belongs to the State. It is protected as a historic monument: listed (classé) in 1965 for the façade of the east staircase and a vaulted ground-floor room, then registered (inscrit) in 1994 for the façades, roofs, cellars and archaeological ground.