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Origin and history

Mesmont Castle, also known as Romance Castle, is located in the commune of Mesmont, in the Ardennes. Built in the first quarter of the 17th century, it succeeds an earlier residence attested in 1607 on a gouache of Charles III of Croÿ. Its plan organizes a rectangular floor lined with buildings, accessible by a brick and stone entrance pavilion, preceded by a dormant bridge and a drawbridge. A round tower, lined with stones down and bricks upstairs, flanks the main house body.

The family of Villelongue, owner of the lands of Mesmont and Wasigny at the beginning of the seventeenth century, gave the estate in 1639 to the family of Romance, bound by matrimonial alliances. In the 18th century, Germain-Hyacinthe de Romance, Marquis de Mesmont, inherited the castle but lost it during the French Revolution after his emigration. Confiscated, the estate then moved to the Ternals-Compans, including Maurice Ternals-Compans, a diplomat, who restored him after his partial destruction by fire in February 1916 during the First World War.

The building, listed as a historical monument in 1994, retains original elements such as moat, the base of the entrance pavilion, and the masonries of the round tower. Its reconstruction in the inter-war period preserved its 17th century architectural character, mixing bricks, stones and roofs on a steep slope. The outbuildings, with triangular pediments, complement this emblematic set of Ardennes heritage.

The castle illustrates the upheavals of local history, from 17th century religious conflicts to the destruction of the Great War. Its inscription in 1994 protects the facades, roofs of the communes, the square pavilion, as well as the moat and the dormant bridge, testimonies of its aristocratic past and its successive reconstructions.

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