Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Château-Naillac, located in the commune of Blanc (Indre), is one of the last castles keeping the Creuse valley since the 12th century. It is distinguished by its two twin dungeons, rare examples of medieval architecture, built without buttresses and with smooth walls. These dungeons, located on parallel and independent axes, were connected after 1714 by a low building. Originally, this castle strengthened the region alongside a now extinct poitevin dungeon.

The name of the castle is linked to the family of Naillac, lords of white, butchery and clay in the 13th–15th centuries. In the 18th century, financier Claude Dupin and his wife Louise de Fontaine acquired the marquisat du Blanc, including Château-Naillac, in 1738. Little habitable because used as a prison, they prefer to reside in a particular hotel in the city, the "House of the Marquise". When Madame Dupin died in 1799, the estate was left to her grand-nevew, Auguste-Louis Vallet de Villeneuve, Baron and officer, who inherited it until her death in 1837.

In 1986, the castle became the seat of the "Ecousée de la Brenne", hosting a permanent exhibition on local history. In the same year, its facades, roofs, cellars, vestiges of the enclosures (high court and low court) and towers are listed as historical monuments. These protections include dungeons, courtesies and entry gates, witnesses to his defensive and seigneurial past.

The castle thus illustrates several epochs: medieval by its dungeons of the 12th–13th centuries, Renaissance by its development of the 15th–12th centuries, and modern by its contemporary museum role. Its history also reflects social changes, from a seigneurial fortress to a bourgeois property and then to a cultural place open to the public.

Future

In 1986 the Château-Naillac became the seat of the Écousée de la Brenne and housed the permanent exhibition: Men, a country, a history.

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