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Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Château de Lavaur, located at the Broc in Puy-de-Dôme, is a medieval fort house that has retained its primitive silhouette. This fief, attested from the beginning of the sixteenth century, was modified in the seventeenth century and then decorated at the end of the eighteenth century. Its woodwork, wallpapers and canvases depicting Don Quixote (circa 1782) bear witness to this fascinating period. The paintings, signed Moulianeuf, are inspired by Coypel's drawings, while the large living room features marouflé wallpapers acquired at the Réveillon manufacture in 1782, decorated with grotesque motifs revisited by 18th-century French art.

The building, rebuilt in 1898, includes a landscaped park planted in English at the end of the 19th century. Ranked Historical Monument in 1992 (for the castle and its interior decorations) and in 1995 (for the large living room and its wallpapers), it illustrates the evolution of a seigneurial residence in aristocratic residence, mixing medieval heritage and beautifications of the Enlightenment.

The protected elements include the dining room with its Don Quixote canvases, an office with its fireplace, a four-bedroom, and a gypsum room. These decorations, combined with architecture, offer a rare testimony of the artistic tastes of the Auvergne nobility between the Middle Ages and the Revolution.

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