Οι καλύτερες διαδρομές ποδηλασίας χωρίς κυκλοφορία Sers

private property

free visit

Don't hesitate to get off the Flow Vélo to discover the village of Marthon. The detour is worth it!

Nice place to stop for a break and admire the beautiful view of the landscape!

On leaving Marthon, this castle was commissioned by Hubert de La Rochefoucauld, around 1560, to replace an old fortress burned down during the Hundred Years War. However, it was not until the 20th century that this construction was restored and completed. It is private property but can be enjoyed from the outside.

This feudal castle, built in the 15th and 16th centuries, has passed from family to family over the centuries. It is said that he had such an impressive orangery that it was sold in 1893 to the city of Bordeaux.

The Château-neuf is an imposing residence located along the road to Nontron, at the eastern exit of the town of Marthon. Originally, the construction of the castle was the work of Hubert de La Rochefoucauld, lord of Marthon. He built the "new castle" in the 1560s to replace the old Romanesque castle which had been burned and damaged by the English during the Hundred Years' War in 1347. This building of the second French Renaissance remained unfinished due to of the death of the sponsor in 1566. Thereafter, the successive owners carried out some maintenance work, however not commensurate with the restorations carried out in the years 1900-1910 by the deputy Maurice Étienne Raynaud (Marthon 1860 - Paris 1927). This native of Marthon was a Radical deputy for Charente from 1906 to 1924, but also Minister of Agriculture in 1910-1911, then in 1913-1914 and finally Minister of the Colonies for a few months in 1914. Before this intervention, the south facade was surmounted by a wooden gallery underlined by a stone entablature and gargoyles forming consoles. This facade ended to the left of the grand staircase. The Renaissance project, suspended at the death of Hubert de La Rochefoucauld, probably planned to place the staircase in the center of the facade to obtain perfect symmetry. It is precisely the extension of the facade, to the left of the main staircase, that the deputy Raynaud had made in the years 1900-1910. The multi-purpose loggia, topped by a couple with a lantern and located above the porch which houses the main staircase, is also an addition from the beginning of the 20th century, like the hipped roof. To light the attic, this roof was equipped with skylights placed in line with the openings of the facade. The south facade is punctuated by numerous mullioned and cross-piece bays, framed by Ionic columns. The grid of this facade, created by the superposition of bays, forming vertical lines, by the cornice separating the two levels and the entablature which underlines the roof while constituting horizontal lines, is one of the architectural particularities of the Renaissance style in the French. However, we speak rather of an eclectic style for the Château-neuf, as the alterations of the 20th century were numerous and decisive for the general appearance of the residence.

It has several main buildings built at different times. The cellar, the medieval room with a broken barrel vault, probably contemporary with the 12th century church, has an underground passage and two wells, food reserves. On this cellar was built a building currently flanked by two towers (15th and 16th century). Attached to this structure, a two-storey building (early 17th century) on which is grafted at an angle a building with an attic storey (late 17th, early 18th century). The machicolated portal adjoins an elegant mansard-roofed pavilion adorned with a row of balusters, followed by the castle, flanked by two round towers topped with sloped roofs. Opposite the pavilion, there is a tower and a small aedicule, in the form of a watchtower, which is accessed by a staircase; a frieze completes the whole. The enclosure included an orangery backing onto the church, whose once famous orange trees were sold in 1893 to the city of Bordeaux, a 17th century square watchtower, a park, an orchard and a pond.