Château de Saint-André

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Château de Saint-André, in Saint-André-de-la-Roche in the Alpes-Maritimes, occupies the site of a former medieval fortified house first mentioned in 1624, itself built on a fief whose origin goes back to a donation to the abbey of Saint-Pons in Nice. In 1441 the fief belonged to Raybaud Chabaud, lord of Tourettes, and in 1555 it passed by marriage to Melchior Michelotti. In 1606, Pierre Thaon married Camilla Michelotti, heiress to the fief, which brought the estate into the Thaon family, later Thaon de Revel, who kept it from 1611 to 1860. Over the course of the 18th century this family gradually transformed the medieval fortified house, with its thick walls and arrow slits, into a pleasant Italian-style villa. After the annexation of the County of Nice to France in 1860, the château was sold in 1862 to the Saint-Paul hospice. It subsequently served as a school, a holiday camp and then a military hospital, before being taken over by the association of the Compagnons d'Emmaüs. The façades, roofs and chapel are listed as historic monuments, while the grand salon, the galleries, the vestibule and the decorated salons are classified, by order of 10 June 1975.