Le château de Saint-Brisson-sur-Loire, fleuron du renouveau de l’architecture castrale à la fin du xiie siècle

Abstract

Little known until now, the Château of Saint-Brisson-sur-Loire is an exceptional edifice in more ways than one in the history of castle architecture. In spite of modern transformations, it has preserved vestiges of an extremely massive exterior fortification with walls 20 meters high and 4.5 meters thick, as well as traces of a large residential program, which includes open-work windows giving onto the Loire. The original building was the result of a unified construction attributed to Etienne Ier de Sancerre or his brother Guillaume aux Blanches Mains, in the years 1180-1200. With its compact enclosure in the form of an almost triangular hexagone and regularly flanked