Castle of Pesteils

The Castle of Pesteils (French Château de Pesteils) stands in the French commune of Polminhac in the Cantal department of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.

The castle originally bore the name of the place, Polminhac. In 1370 the lordship belonged to Jean de Foulholes, through whose daughter Benoîte it passed by marriage to Rigaud de Montamat. In 1414 it was conquered by Renaud de Murat, who was feuding with Bernard VII of Armagnac because Murat refused him the oath of fealty. The seigneurs of Montamat, Polminhac and Foulholes kept the lordship until 1510, when it again passed by marriage to Guy V de Pesteils, lord of Branzac Castle. Since then the castle has borne the name of this family. In 1608 it passed through his daughter-in-law to Charles de Cassagnes de Beaufort de Miramon, whose son Jacques had a new residential building erected around 1640. The castle belongs to this family to this day.

The castle was classified as a monument historique on 18 July 1994 and thus placed under monument protection. The interior furnishings are also protected. Thus the wall paintings "The Five Senses" in the great salon, created by the painter Félix Tourdes (1855–1920) between 1901 and 1911, were placed under monument protection on 28 March 1980.

In 1942 the castle served as a setting for the French film L'Éternel Retour with Madeleine Sologne and Jean Marais. The castle can be visited on guided tours.

Machine-translated from “Schloss Pesteils” on the German Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Castle of Pesteils ranks #4,229 of 7,044 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #346 of the 456 mapped in France. Founded c. 1640, it is older than 27% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 522 atlas entries founded in the 17th century. See how France compares in the castle statistics.

View on the interactive castle map →

Read the full history on Wikipedia (in German) ↗