France · 15th century
The Castle of Saint-Germain-de-Livet (French Château de Saint-Germain-de-Livet) is a castle complex in the French village of Saint-Germain-de-Livet, about six kilometres south of Lisieux in the Calvados department of the Normandy region. The moat of the moated castle is fed by a small tributary of the Touques.
First parts of the castle were placed under monument protection as a monument historique as early as March 1924. They were followed in 1959, 1963, 1966 and most recently in 2007 by further parts of the buildings, which were likewise added to the list of monuments.
The entire castle complex has been the property of the town of Lisieux since 1958 and is open to visitors. It is a good example of French noble architecture at the time of the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, for the observer still finds on the buildings defensive elements such as machicolations as well as already decorative architectural details without any defensive function.
Machine-translated from “Schloss Saint-Germain-de-Livet” on the German Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Castle of Saint-Germain-de-Livet ranks #4,947 of 9,079 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #430 of the 793 mapped in France. Founded c. 1450, it is older than 47% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 554 atlas entries founded in the 15th century. Wikidata records about 19,000 visitors in 2019. 2 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Évreux, 69 km away. It is one of the 33 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of Normandy. See how France compares in the castle statistics.
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