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Origin and history

The Hotel de Castan, located at 1 Collot Street in Montpellier, is a mansion built during the second half of the 17th century. At that time, the building belonged to Noble Pierre de Sengla, a doctor and lawyer, who had the façade, gate and staircase erected. Despite the narrowness of the street, the facade was carefully decorated: three floors pierced by large rectangular windows, separated by ground bands, and surmounted by a baroque cornice decorated with carved heads and gargoyles in the shape of lions. A frieze of rinceaux running under the cornice, illustrating the fascist sought by the Montpellierian aristocracy.

The interior distribution reveals a typical organisation of urban hotels: a side gate leads, via vaulted corridors, to a narrow courtyard to give way to a large staircase serving noble apartments (on the facade) and outbuildings (at the bottom of the plot). This arrangement reflects the social hierarchy of the time, where representation spaces predominated over service areas. In the 18th century, the hotel, mentioned in the compoix as early as the 15th century, passed to the treasurer of France Castan, with its present name.

The building, which has been fully protected since 2015 under the name "Sengla Hotel, known as the Caston House", embodies the architectural and social evolution of Montpellier, between medieval heritage (compoix) and classical ambitions (baroque decorations). Its location in the city centre, although difficult to appreciate because of the narrowness of the street (precision of location noted 5/10), makes it a rare testimony of the aristocratic urbanism of Languedoc under the Old Regime.

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