Château de Castries

En un regard

Le château en bref

Perched on a hill overlooking the Languedoc plain, some fifteen kilometres north-east of Montpellier, the Château de Castries is one of the great seigneurial residences of Languedoc. Dubbed ‘the little Versailles of Languedoc’, it is inseparable from the La Croix de Castries family, who acquired the barony in 1495 and held it, with interruptions, for nearly five centuries. The present château was begun in 1565 by Jacques de La Croix de Castries, on the remains of a medieval fortress. That fortress was razed in 1622, during the Wars of Religion, on the orders of the Duke of Rohan, leader of the Protestant party; only the rib-vaulted ground-floor rooms of the north wing survive. The residence was taken up again from 1645 and completed in the last third of the 17th century, under the master builder Jean Bonnassier, who was working on the site in 1663–1664. The plan called for three wings in a U shape around a main courtyard, but only two were built, forming an L flanked by large square pavilions with glazed tile roofs. In the 17th century, René-Gaspard de La Croix de Castries had the French formal gardens laid out, attributed to André Le Nôtre, and brought water from the Fontgrand spring by an aqueduct of nearly 7 km, begun in 1670 and traditionally associated with Pierre-Paul Riquet, the creator of the Canal du Midi. Terraces, ramps, star-shaped avenues, basins and a water mirror still make up the park today. Looted during the Revolution, the château was restored in the 19th century by the family, then bought back in 1935 by René de La Croix de Castries, historian and member of the Académie française. He gathered the family collections there to create a museum of his lineage's history, and in 1985 gave the château to the Académie française. Sold again in 2013 to the commune of Castries, the whole ensemble — château, park, gardens and outbuildings — has been listed as a historic monument in its entirety since 2004; the aqueduct has been listed since 1949. After a long restoration campaign begun in 2017 (roofs, salle des États, staircase, library, apartments), the château reopened to the public in September 2026 with a new route, the ‘Château de Lumières’, which combines the history of the Castries family with immersive installations and monumental projections.