Castelnau-Bretenoux is one of the magical
summer settings for the Saint Céré
Music Festival. Don't miss it.
Castelnau-Bretenoux is claimed as the biggest fortress in southern
France and of great importance to military historians.
The Lords of Castelnau where not the shrinking violet types, claiming
allegiance to no-one but the Counts of Toulouse and to be the 'second
Barons of Christendom'. Not surprisingly, such fighting talk ended
up in, well, fighting and the castle was the scene of some of the
bitterest fighting of the hundred years war in these parts.
In the end it took a Frenchman to tame the castle... Simon de Montfort
took it by storm during the Albigensian Crusade. The French Revolution
brought further fighting and the drawbridge was destroyed. It took
an opera singer to repair all the damage of war and time!
In 1895 Jean Mouliérat bought the much declined castle and
dedicated the rest of his life restoring it, bequeathing it to the
nation in 1932.
