Château de Sainte-Agnès

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Château de Sainte-Agnès overlooks, at an altitude of about 800 metres, the village of Sainte-Agnès from a rocky spur offering a panoramic view over the Bay of Menton and the Mediterranean. Excavations carried out in 1993 showed that the tower and the first courses of masonry date from the late 10th or early 11th century, although tradition and a first written mention long placed its foundation around 1180. Under the authority of the counts of Ventimiglia and then of the counts of Provence, the castle experienced recurrent conflicts with Genoa in the 13th and 14th centuries. From 1388 it came under the control of the House of Savoy, which kept it for five centuries, until the annexation of the County of Nice to France by referendum in 1860. In 1691, on the orders of Louis XIV, the chevalier de la Fare had it partially destroyed; the site nevertheless regained strategic importance during the War of the Austrian Succession (1744-1749). Now restored, the ruins house a medieval garden laid out by the association of the Peintres du Soleil.