Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Château de Filain, located in the eponymous village of Haute-Saône, is a Renaissance-style building built around 1550 by the Sacquenay family. It incorporates elements of a 15th century strong house, such as four round towers, enclosure walls and dry moat. In the 16th century, two square towers were added, and the wall closing the inner courtyard was removed, while a Renaissance fireplace adorns the guard room. The estate, redesigned in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, passed into the hands of several families, including the Cointet, the Camus (Marquis de Filain), and then General Marola in 1808, who retained it for forty years.

Ranked a historic monument in 1944 after the cancellation of a first arrest in 1927, the castle suffered a fire in 2004 which destroyed the central arcades, not restored to date. Since 1980, the Montornès family has begun the restoration of the castle and its gardens, built in the French style with a box hedge and a rose garden with a variety of roses named in its honour. The visits, interrupted since the fire, highlighted this heritage combining medieval military architecture and Renaissance elegance.

The castle illustrates the evolution of fortresses in aristocratic residences, typical of Burgundy-Franche-Comté. Its history reflects the social and architectural transformations, from medieval strong houses to pleasure houses of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while preserving traces of its defensive past. Today, there remains a testimony of the craftsmanship and stylistic influences that have marked the region.

External links