En un regard
Le château en bref
The Tour aux Puces stands in the historic centre of Thionville, in the Moselle department, close to the River Moselle. This powerful fourteen-sided polygonal tower, built in the 11th and 12th centuries, was probably the keep of the castle of the counts, later dukes, of Luxembourg, erected on the site of a Carolingian palace. It rests on a circular base long considered Carolingian, an interpretation that the Inventory now regards as unproven. From 1292 the tower housed the seat of the provost, and by the mid-16th century it had been incorporated into the Spanish fortifications. Its name is said to derive from a mistranslation of the Frankish Pëtztuurm, ‘the well tower’. Freed up in 1903 when the ramparts were demolished, it has housed an archaeology museum since 1905, labelled Musée de France.