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Origin and history

Passy-Veron Castle, located in the Yonne department in Passy, is an example of 17th-century classical architecture, typical of the Louis XIII style. Organized in the shape of a U, it includes a central house body with pediment, two advanced wings, and a turret at the southwest corner. The court of honour, accessible by an old drawbridge door, is framed by communes arranged quadrilaterally around a square courtyard. A long treed driveway leads to the entrance, while the west façade overlooks the park's remains and offers views of the Yonne.

During the French Revolution, the castle belonged to the financier Antoine Mégret, Count of Sérilly, guillotined in 1794 with his family and Madame Élisabeth, sister of Louis XVI. His wife, Anne-Louise de Domangeville, escaped death invoking an alleged pregnancy. She then remarried with François de Pange, then with Anne-Pierre de Montesquiou-Fézensac. The estate served as a military hospital during the First World War before being transformed into a holiday colony in the 20th century.

Ranked a Historic Monument in 1926, the castle was partially rehabilitated in the 21st century in private condominiums, including commons divided into apartments. Only facades, roofs, moats, and original stairways remain in their historical condition, the interiors having been modernized. The ensemble, not open to the public, nevertheless retains protected elements such as ditches, grids, and a funeral chapel in the park.

The successive protections (1926, 1964, 2003) concern the facades of the castle, communes, moats, and fence walls. The site, now private property, illustrates the evolution of the uses of French castles, moving from aristocratic residence to a place of memory and contemporary housing. The traces of the old moat and the drawbridge recall its defensive origin, although its architecture mainly reflects the 17th-century fascist.

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