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Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Château de La Roche, located in Rigney in the Doubs, is a 13th century building renovated in the 16th and 17th centuries, inscribed as historical monuments since 1998. Built on a cliff overlooking the Ognon valley, it probably succeeds a Gallo-Roman site. Property of the family of La Roche from the 11th to the 14th century, it then passes into the hands of the family of Plaine, who rebuilt the house in the late 15th and 16th centuries.

After the French Revolution, the estate was acquired by the Count of Scey, who installed a sugar factory there in 1811. The castle then became a cheese factory in 1847, then a modern farm in 1854, before building a school farm from 1869. These activities partially transform its architecture, with buildings dedicated to production (stables, barn, fenil) and industrial remains such as the mill modernized in the 19th century.

In 1986, the diamond-maker Jean de Foucauld bought the château to abandon and undertook a complete restoration to make it a place for temporary artistic exhibitions. The building preserves remarkable elements such as French ceilings, hooded chimneys, a chapel, as well as vaulted basements and the eastern wing dovecote. The ditches, platform and archaeological remains have been protected since the 1998 registration.

The site thus illustrates a typical evolution of the Frankish castles, moving from a defensive and seigneurial function to agricultural and industrial uses, before being reborn as a cultural space. Its architecture combines medieval traces, classical redevelopments and adaptations related to its successive economic activities.

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