Château de Gannat

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Château de Gannat is a square-plan fortified castle with four large machicolated corner towers linked by crenellated curtain walls, dated to the 14th century by the Mérimée database; an earlier building is said to have existed from around 1200 on the site of an older castle motte near the church of Sainte-Croix. Originally outside the town walls and surrounded by water, the building became uninhabitable as early as the 16th century; it retains traces of a fireplace and two pointed-arch openings in its east wall. Damaged in the 15th century by English troops, it was described in 1566 as "ruined and uninhabited" (« ruiné et dézabité »). The castellany changed hands several times: exchanged between Louis XIII and the Princess of Conti in 1629, bought by the financier John Law in 1720, then ceded to the Marquis de Villemont in 1739. Used as a prison from the late 16th century until the early 20th century according to the Mérimée database, the building then became the Yves-Machelon municipal museum, devoted to local history. The curtain wall and the four towers were registered as historic monuments (inscrits) by order of 28 December 1926. The museum, which also occupies an adjoining 19th-century prison building, notably displays a 9th-century Carolingian Gospel book classified as a historic monument and the skeleton of a fossil rhinoceros.