Château de Castelnaud-la-Chapelle

Castelnaud was raised, probably in the late 12th century, and belonged to Bernard de Casnac, a Cathar lord and vassal of the Count of Toulouse. In 1214 Simon de Montfort, leading the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars, seized the fortress and installed a garrison there; Bernard retook it and hanged every man in it. The castle he recaptured did not stand long — it was burned by the Archbishop of Bordeaux in 1215. A new castle was raised on the site in the mid-13th century under the authority of the French crown, and after the Treaty of Paris in 1259 Castelnaud recognised the suzerainty of the Duke of Aquitaine, Henry III of England.

In 1368 Magne de Castelnaud married the lord Nompar de Caumont, and the Caumont family became lords of Castelnaud and Berbiguières. When the Hundred Years' War began the Caumonts sided with the English, while across the river the sieurs de Beynac held for the king of France; over the course of the war the castle changed hands repeatedly as alliances shifted. In March 1437, after sixteen years of English occupation, it was retaken by troops under Jean de Carbonnières, known as the bastard of Pelvezy; it fell back into English hands in March 1439.

In 1442 Charles VII ordered the siege of Castelnaud, then held by partisans of the English king Henry VI. After three weeks the garrison surrendered the fortress for 400 gold écus, and the French retook it for good on 7 October 1442 — eleven years before they won the war outright at the Battle of Castillon. The Caumonts recovered their castle afterwards and kept it until the Revolution.

During the Wars of Religion the Caumonts had turned Protestant, and their Huguenot captain Geoffroy de Vivans, called "le batailleur" and feared throughout Périgord, defended Castelnaud with new fortifications — a bastion and an artillery tower. No one attempted to take the castle during a period of fighting that was otherwise intense across the region, and a garrison of varying size continued to occupy it until the Revolution.

Sold as a national asset in 1789 after its owners fled, Castelnaud was quarried for its stone; the artillery tower and the south range lost their tops, and vegetation overtook a castle that fell into obscurity. It was bought in 1965 by the diplomat Philippe Rossillon, mayor of neighbouring Beynac-et-Cazenac, and his wife Véronique, who began restoring it; their son Kléber Rossillon took over in 1985, opened the castle to the public and founded its museum of medieval warfare, building full-scale reconstructions of siege engines including a trebuchet, a mangonel and a bombard. The museum's collection runs to some 300 pieces of arms and armour from the 13th to the 17th centuries, drawn mostly from the German-speaking lands of Austria, Germany and Switzerland.