Castle of the counts of Gruyères

The castle went up between 1270 and 1282 on the square plan typical of Savoyard fortification, the same model used at Bulle and Yverdon. The site explains the building: a glacial knoll rising some 115 metres above the surrounding plain at the entrance to the Intyamon valley, commanding the middle valley of the Sarine. In the Middle Ages that valley carried traffic towards the Valais over the Mosses and Sanetsch passes, and from the hilltop the view runs to Bulle in the north, Charmey in the east and Grandvillard in the south. During the comital period the castle could exchange visual signals with the castles of La Tour-de-Trême and Montsalvens.

Its builders, the Counts of Gruyère, were among the most important comital houses of French-speaking Switzerland, though their origins remain uncertain; for close to five centuries they governed a wide territory from this hill. The esplanade before the castle, enclosed by a second ring of fortification from the second half of the fifteenth century, had originally been the first bourg of Gruyères, recorded in the sources from 1244.

In 1476 troops from Gruyères marched with the Swiss Confederates against Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and shared in the booty taken at the Battle of Morat. Three capes of the Order of the Golden Fleece from that plunder remain in the castle; one, a black velvet sacerdotal vestment sewn with the emblem of Philip the Good, dates from Charles's observance of the anniversary of his father's death.

In the same century Count Louis of Gruyère began turning the fortress into a seigneurial residence: stone galleries replaced the old timber ones around the courtyard and a stair-tower was raised to link the floors, though the scheme was broken off around 1540 before it could extend to the whole court. Louis and his wife Claude de Seyssel also fitted out the chapel of Saint John the Baptist in a tower of the enceinte in 1480 — an inscription on its portal records the commission — with stained glass supplied in 1482 by a workshop in Vevey.

The dynasty ended not in war but in debt. The last count, Michel, was overwhelmed by obligations he could not repay, and in 1554 he ceded all his possessions to his principal creditors, the cities of Fribourg and Bern, which divided the county between them. From 1555 the castle housed the bailiffs who represented Fribourg's authority, and from 1798 its prefects; it remained the regional administrative seat until 1848, when the prefecture was transferred to Bulle. The following year the castle was put up for sale.

In 1849 the castle was bought by the brothers Jean-François, Antoine and Daniel Bovy of Geneva, who made it their summer residence and established a Fourierist-inspired artists' community there known as 'La Colonie'. Daniel Bovy, who directed the renovation, invited painters of standing: Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot stayed in 1852, 1857 and 1859, alongside Swiss artists including Barthélemy Menn and Auguste Baud-Bovy. The restorations demanded heavy investment, and although their nephew Louis-Émile Balland took over management in 1861, after three generations the cost of upkeep forced the family to part with the estate.

The canton of Fribourg bought the castle back in 1938 and turned it into a museum, open to the public since 1939. Since 1993 a foundation has run and conserved the site, which is listed as a Swiss cultural property of national significance.