Château de Beaufort

The Château de Beaufort is a ruined castle located along the upper reaches of the river Loire in France. It is near the village of Goudet in the département of Haute-Loire, in the Auvergne region. It was built in the 13th century and modified in the 15th and 16th centuries. Perched on a rocky headland overhanging the granitic rocks of the Margeride, the fortress is today a ruined shell.

Robert Louis Stevenson stopped here on his trip documented in Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879).

"In this pleasant humour I came down the hill to where Goudet stands in a green end of a valley, with Château Beaufort opposite upon a rocky steep, and the stream, as clear as crystal, lying in a deep pool between them."

Text adapted from “Château de Beaufort” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Château de Beaufort ranks #4,002 of 8,133 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #304 of the 524 mapped in France. Founded c. 1250, it is older than 69% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 860 atlas entries founded in the 13th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 1,178 times in the last 60 days, more than 53% of the atlas. See how France compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia ↗