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Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Château de Montbard came into being at the end of the 11th century, when Bernard I of Montbard, feudal lord, erected a wooden castral motte on a strategic site at the intersection of the valleys leading to Paris, Dijon and Semur-en-Auxois. This first castle marks the urban development of Montbard. His son, André de Montbard, will become one of the nine founders of the Order of the Temple, while his daughter, Saint Alèthe, will be the mother of Saint Bernard de Clairvaux, a Cistercian reformer who will found the Abbey of Fontenay nearby in 1119.

In 1189, the castle passed to the Dukes of Burgundy by exchange with Hugues III, marking the end of the local seigneurial lineage. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the Dukes transformed the building into a stone fortress, surrounded by ramparts and defensive towers, from which today the towers of the Aubespin and Saint-Louis remain. The chapel, dedicated to Saint Louis, bears witness to this period. In the 15th century, the castle welcomed the Dukes Valois of Burgundy and saw the marriage by proxy of Anne of Burgundy with Jean de Lancastre in 1423.

From 1477, the fief returned to the French crown under Louis XI, which entrusted him to successive noble families, including the Orléans-Longueville and the Savoie-Nemours. After a period of abandonment in the seventeenth century, the castle was awarded in 1687 to Abbé Lorin, parish priest of Montbard. In the 18th century, Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, a famous naturalist, obtained its management in 1733 and radically transformed it: it filled the moat, lowered the ramparts and set up a park of three hectares on terraces, mixing gardens with French and Italian. The Saint-Louis Tower, reduced by one floor, houses its library, while a work office is built on the ramparts. Buffon wrote his Natural History (1749-1788), with the collaboration of Daubenton and Lacépede.

The park, now classified as a historic monument (1947), houses an LPO reserve and a museum dedicated to Buffon and Enlightenment, located in the former stables. The Aubespin tower, a former machicoulis master tower, has been classified since 1862. The site, owned by the city since 1870, perpetuates the scientific and landscape heritage of Buffon, while testifying to its medieval and ducal past.

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