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Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The castle of the Bruget stands as a rectangular building flanked by two towers to the north and a round tower to the south, housing a 14th century staircase. Its southern façade, pierced by rectangular windows and murderers, reveals traces of successive transformations. A stone engraved with coat of arms, discovered in 1985 above the entrance door, is attributed to the family of The Tower of Beins. Inside, a monumental fireplace on the first floor, adorned with decorated capitals and a stablely molded, was restored with slabs recovered from a chapel of Aubenas. The staircase with screws, covered with an umbel vault called "sarrasine", leads to an attic accessible by a small door.

The castle was reportedly built in the 17th century by the family of La Tour de Beins on older remains, before passing into the hands of the Launay. In 1780 Emmanuel de Launay, Count of Antraigues, handed him over to Aimé Monteil, a lawyer at Jaujac. After becoming a national during the Revolution, he was transformed into a farm and saved from the ruin in the 1930s by Georges Balaÿ and his sisters. The restorations of this period included the consolidation of the facade, the repair of the windows and the winding of the large chimney. Joined historical monuments in 1954, it now belongs to a private company.

The building illustrates the architectural evolution between the Middle Ages and the modern era, with defensive elements (murder, towers) and Renaissance additions (pathways, windows). The coat of arms of the La Tour de Beins family and the "sarrasine" vault underline its medieval heritage, while the transformations of the 17th and 18th centuries reflect its adaptation to residential needs. The reuse of materials, such as the slabs of the chapel of Aubenas, bears witness to restoration practices in the 20th century.

Located in the department of Ardèche, in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the Château du Bruget is representative of the regional castral heritage. Its history, linked to local noble families (from La Tour de Beins, Launay), then to bourgeois owners (Monteil, Balaÿ), makes it a marker of the social and political changes of the Old Regime in the contemporary era. Its inscription in 1954 consecrated its heritage value, despite its post-revolutionary agricultural use.

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