En un regard
Le château en bref
The Château d'Assas, an eighteenth-century folly a few kilometres north of Montpellier (Hérault), was sold in 1486 by Hugues d'Assas to Guillaume Bonnal; it then passed to the Pluviès and Montchal families, then to Joseph de Boyer, marquis de Sorgues, before being acquired in 1747 by Jean Mouton de La Clotte, whose descendants kept it until the Revolution. Rebuilt in the 1740s, it is attributed to the Montpellier architect Jean-Antoine Giral: the façade has two pavilions with canted corners, each with an additional storey rising above the central body, with Ionic pilasters crowned by a balustrade. The great salon retains canvases by Jacques de Lajoüe, as well as the wrought ironwork of the balconies and a chandelier from the Château de la Mosson, demolished in 1758. The Scottish town planner Patrick Geddes acquired it in the 1920s to house a centre for urban studies; Robert Demangel became its owner in 1949, and his heirs remain the owners today. The château, which served as a filming location for La Belle Noiseuse (1991) by Jacques Rivette and Le Retour de Casanova (1992) by Édouard Niermans, houses a baroque chamber organ and an eighteenth-century harpsichord; it is open to visitors from Wednesday to Sunday, 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. in July and August, and during the Journées du patrimoine.
