Tallard Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Tallard Castle overlooks the Durance plain to the south of the commune of Tallard (Hautes-Alpes, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur). Placed under the protection of the princes of Orange as early as the 10th century, it passed in 1215 to the Hospitallers of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, who built a small fortified structure there. Exchanged in 1322 with Arnaud de Trians for Sicilian lands, he turned it into a true castle, comprising the keep and the residential block; Tallard became a viscounty in 1326, with seven parishes attached. In 1496, Bernardin de Clermont, enriched by his marriage to the heiress Anne de Husson, added the lower courtyard and its long guardroom, the seigneurial chapel in the Flamboyant Gothic style, the entrance gatehouse (châtelet) and the Garenne park. The Wars of Religion forced the Clermont family into exile for more than twenty years from 1562; the castle, then contested, attracted in particular François de Bonne, Duke of Lesdiguières. Étienne de Bonne d'Auriac bought back and restored the weakened fortress in 1600; his descendant Camille d'Hostun, Marshal of France under Louis XIV, inherited it. In 1692, the Duke of Savoy attacked and set fire to it, leaving it abandoned until its purchase in 1897 by the historian Joseph Roman. Countess Blanche de Clermont-Tonnerre acquired it in 1927 and maintained it until her death in 1944. The commune of Tallard acquired it in 1957, embarking on a systematic restoration carried on in particular by the Société d'études des Hautes-Alpes under a 99-year emphyteutic lease concluded in 1964; the castle as a whole was listed as a monument historique in 1969.