Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

Dejean Castle rises in Villaries on the remains of a castle destroyed in 1570 during the Wars of Religion. At the beginning of the 17th century, Jean De Jean, prosecutor at the Sénéchal in Toulouse, undertook his reconstruction in a style still marked by defensive elements: a body of quadrilateral houses flanked by four corbelling towers, equipped with murderers. The vaulted cellars and the pool, mentioned in the archives, date from this pivotal period between the Middle Ages and the modern era.

In the 18th century, the merchant Jean Toulza acquired the estate in 1754 and made it a pleasure home. It radically modernises the building: piercing of southern facades, adding a terrace, construction of symmetrical lateral wings housing commons and a chapel, and magnificent interior decoration. The gypseries of the Salon des Arts Libéraux and the Negotiation (1787) and the stairwell illustrate this fascination. The chapel, adorned with a stucco angel pediment, houses its burial.

The current architecture thus combines two distinct epochs: the massive structure of the seventeenth century, designed for defence, and the rococo additions of the eighteenth, reflecting the social ascent of the Toulouse merchant bourgeoisie. Ranked Historic Monument in 1998 for its facades, roofs, interior decorations and chapel, the castle also retains traces of its agricultural and residential use, with communes and a precise address at 761 Chemin du Poubil.

The successive transformations reveal the social affirmation strategies of its owners. The De Jean family, anobligated by judicial charges, gave way to Jean Toulza, whose fortune from the trade financed luxurious developments. These architectural metamorphoses embody the transition from a nobility of earth robe to an economic elite open to the Enlightenment, while preserving symbolic medieval elements, such as the corner towers.

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