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Origin and history

Blancey Castle, located at the western end of the eponymous village in the Gold Coast, finds its origins in a medieval strong house attested from the 15th century. The barn in front of the building dates from the first third of this period, while a fortress mentioned in 1461 as the property of Cardinal d'Ostun passed in 1488 to Guillaume Buret de Saizerey. In 1616, a burrow described an already structured castle: three towers (one with chapel), courtyards, gardens, ditches and agricultural outbuildings, then owned by Étienne Dareau, king's adviser. These elements suggest a gradual transformation from a strong place into a seigneurial residence.

Today's architecture combines defensive remains and additions from the 17th and 18th centuries. The house body, flanked by a semi-out-of-work tower and two circular towers, is connected to outbuildings by a wall of enclosure with a drawbridge grooved portal and an arch-canonary ramp. The right tower houses a vaulted chapel in a crib, accessible by a screw staircase, while the house preserves vaulted rooms on the ground floor and floor ceilings. The isolated wrought iron gate, dating from the 18th century, completed access to the courtyard.

Successive reshuffles have erased part of the medieval history of the site, although elements such as the archeries or the 1584 vintage (used above the gate) testify to earlier construction phases. The building of the communes, with its symmetrical openings and its broken roof with croupes, as well as the grid of the park, date back to the 18th century. The ensemble, protected as Historic Monument since 1988, illustrates the evolution of a Burgundy seigneury, from the defensive needs of the sixteenth century to the residential concerns of the Enlightenment.

The interior furniture reveals a typical organization of the seigneurial houses: a square low room with fireplace, a kitchen and a vaulted room on the ground floor, served by a staircase rotating four nuclei. The floors, covered with exposed floor ceilings, housed the living rooms, while the top floor, illuminated by triangular pediment windows, completed the space. These developments reflect both the increasing comfort of rural elites and the persistence of medieval structures adapted to modern uses.

The site, although little documented before the modern era, retains traces of an ancient occupation: the village and its seigneury are mentioned as early as 866, when Charles le Chauve ratified the gift of a church by Abbé Alard de Saint-Symphorien. This historical continuity, coupled with architectural transformations, makes the Château de Blancey a witness to the social and political changes of Burgundy, from the Carolingians to the bourgeois earthlings of the 17th to 18th centuries.

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