En un regard
Le château en bref
The Château de La Rochepot, some fifteen kilometres south-west of Beaune, occupies a site fortified from the 13th century by the lords of Roche-Nolay; an earlier occupation may have existed in the 11th century under Alexander of Burgundy. In 1403, Régnier Pot, knight of the Golden Fleece, bought the ruins and had a new building erected lower down; his son Philippe Pot (born in 1428), the famous knight of the Golden Fleece whose tomb is preserved in the Louvre, grew up there. Sold as national property in 1799, the château was dismantled during the Revolution, its 30-metre keep and its church being destroyed. From 1893, Colonel Sadi Carnot, son of the widow of the assassinated President Sadi Carnot, undertook its restoration with the architect Charles Suisse, a disciple of Viollet-le-Duc, basing the work on medieval engravings: the works lasted more than 25 years to reconstruct the 15th-century parts. Famous for its roofs of Burgundian glazed tiles, comparable to those of the Hôtel-Dieu in Beaune, the château retains a well cut into the rock to a depth of 70 metres, machicolations and defensive towers. Visited by some 30,000 people a year before 2018, it was acquired in 2015 by a Ukrainian owner prosecuted for money laundering, then seized in 2022 following his conviction and a confiscation procedure.
