Florac Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Florac Castle stands on a spur of tufa limestone near the Vibron resurgence, at Florac-Trois-Rivières in Lozère, on the site of a feudal castle attested in the twelfth century and associated with Raymond d'Anduze, baron of Florac. The lordship, one of the eight baronies of the Gévaudan, passed to the Ventadour family at the end of the fourteenth century, and then to the Poitiers-Valentinois, including Diane de Poitiers. Damaged during the Wars of Religion, the castle was rebuilt in 1652 in limestone and tufa. It is a rectangular main building of three storeys, flanked by turrets and roofed with lauze stone slabs, with an austere exterior architecture. In 1793, its towers were stripped of their crowns; during the Revolution it served as a salt warehouse, and then the Grimoard du Roure family sold it to the State in 1810, which converted it into a prison: iron gratings, inscriptions left by detainees and cell doors still bear witness to this. Restored from 1973 onwards, it has housed the headquarters of the Cévennes National Park since the mid-1970s. No protection as a historic monument has been identified.