France · Restored
Château de la Roque
The Château de la Roque is a medieval château in Meyrals, Dordogne, built from the 12th century and altered in the 13th and 16th centuries. It stands on a steep wooded slope above the Moulan valley and is composed of a tall rectangular residential block flanked by round towers and slate roofs, enclosing a central courtyard.
Its prime
1560
Today
Restored
As it stood in 1560
What Château de la Roque looked like in its prime.
The Château de la Roque perches on a steep wooded hillside above the Moulan valley, built of warm yellow-ochre limestone and sited on rocky outcrops over ancient caves. The composition is a tall rectangular residential block with regular mullioned windows, flanked by several round towers capped by steep conical slate roofs; the roofs and towers create a jagged roofline. A stone entrance châtelet leads to an enclosed courtyard; roofs are dark slate and walls show ashlar masonry typical of Périgord.
Its story
The story of Château de la Roque.
The Defensive Site Above the Cluzeaux, 12th-16th Centuries
The Château de la Roque, in full la Roque des Péagers, was built in the twelfth century and perhaps earlier, in what is now the commune of Meyrals in the Périgord noir. It took the southern slope of a defensive site — an oppidum or dunon of the La Tène period — above a line of cliffs sheltering cluzeaux, the ancient rock-cut caves of the site, and looked out over the valley of the Moulant, a tributary of the Dordogne running between the communes of Castels, Meyrals and Saint-Cyprien. A dry ditch cuts the château off from the hill behind it. The building was altered in the thirteenth century and again in the sixteenth.
The Beynacs, the Beaumonts and the Oratory Paintings
La Roque was a fief of the Beynac and the Beaumont families. Two lodgings of the fifteenth century were set at right angles to one another, with two machicolated towers, one square and one round, joined by a pavilion whose turret carries Renaissance windows; the châtelet that defends the inner courtyard belongs to the early seventeenth century.
The oratory in the square tower keeps wall paintings of the early sixteenth century. God the Father and the four evangelists occupy the vault; the walls carry scenes of the Passion, an Annunciation at the chevet, a Crucifixion and a Saint Francis, and an entombment in which the lord of the place, François de Beynac, and Jeanne de Salignac are both portrayed. A reproduction of the paintings is held at the Musée des Monuments Français in Paris.
Christophe de Beaumont's Exile and the Listing of the Frescoes, 1703-1963
Christophe de Beaumont du Repaire (1703-1781), Archbishop of Paris, was born in the château and was later exiled to it by Louis XV. The reason is told two ways: by one account the banishment came in 1754, after the archbishop condemned Rousseau's Émile ou De l'éducation and the king sought to quiet his quarrel with the Parlement de Paris; by another the archbishop had pressed Louis to give up his mistress, Madame de Pompadour.
The château was inscribed as a monument historique on 5 November 1927, and the sixteenth-century frescoes of the oratory were classified separately on 1 October 1963.
Step inside
8 places to explore in 1560.
The record describes 8 distinct spots at Château de la Roque, including 1 interior: oratory interior with 16th-century frescoes. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
Build Your Own Castle
Recreate Château de la Roque with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1560, a photoreal reconstruction that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
Recreate this castle →Defend this castle →
