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Origin and history

The estate of Montalban, located in Casseuil en Gironde, is a property whose origins date back to a medieval feudal motte called the noble house of Lamothe Montauban. This strategic site controlled the Pas-Saint-Georges ford on the Garonne and enjoyed seigneurial rights, including a river toll and a burial in the local church. According to tradition, the location would correspond to the old Villa Cassinogilum, a Carolingian palace where Charlemagne would have stayed, and where his son Louis I the Pious, the future emperor of the sacred West in Reims, was born in 778. The neighbouring hamlet, again called Le Paradis, would perpetuate this legendary link.

The current residence was built in the 18th century and expanded in the early 19th century. It consists of a body of rectangular houses, a south terrace, and commons organized around a courtyard closed by a wall and a circular tower. A chapel, built in 1745 in the old communes and redecorated in the 19th century, bears witness to its seigneurial use. The interior preserves an exceptional set of three Chinese wallpapers (1800), decorated with birds and butterflies on white and green backgrounds, rare examples of this type of decor in France.

The estate, registered with the historical monuments by decree of 28 December 2010, specifically protects the house with its wallpapers, the terrace, the commons (chapel included), the lower yard and its corner tower. These elements illustrate the evolution of a medieval strong house into an aristocratic residence of the Enlightenment, while preserving traces of its mythified Carolingian past.

The location of the estate, to the west of the village between the deviations of the Pas Saint-Georges (D1113) and the Tucot, underscores its historic role in controlling the river and land axes. Today, the site remains an architectural and memorial testimony, mixing medieval stratigraphy, Bordeaux classicism and decorative exoticism.

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