En un regard
Le château en bref
The Château des Rois-Ducs, at Sauveterre-la-Lémance, is a royal fortress built at the end of the 13th century for Edward I of England, Duke of Aquitaine, to protect eastern Gascony; a castrum is recorded on the site in 1289. Besieged during the War of Saint-Sardos, retaken by Edward III in 1348, and then occupied by the French in 1432, it later became a seigneurial residence. Built on a rocky spur, the complex has a trapezoidal plan flanked by three semicircular towers. The keep contains a domed lower hall and an upper hall with ribbed vaults, and the curtain wall is pierced by cruciform arrow loops. A partly ruined 15th- and 16th-century residential wing completes the site, which has been listed as a monument historique since 7 January 1926. Privately owned.