France
The Château de Castelnau-Bretenoux (French pronunciation: [ʃato də kastɛlno bʁətnu]) is a castle in the commune of Prudhomat, Lot département, France. One of the most impressive in the Quercy region, it has been listed as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture since 1862.
The ancestors of the barons of Castelnau only appear in written history in the 860s. In the cartulary of the Abbey of Beaulieu, mention is made of a donation from a man called Frotaire whose father, Frodin, administered lands in the viguerie of Exitensis from 840 on behalf of the Count of Quercy, later Counts of Rouergue and then Toulouse. Frodin married the daughter of the viscount of Turenne, which tied the families together several times over the next hundreds of years and brought conflict between the families. The marriage also indicates Frodin was a man of importance in the area. He would die around 885. His brother-in-law, Rodolphe of Turenne, Bishop of Bourges, founded the monastery at Beaulieu.
Frotaire expanded the domain of Exitensis and donated land to the monastery at Beaulieu. During the raids of the Vikings up the Dordogne River, under Frotaire's brother's Matfred's rule, and later his son Etienne, they abandoned their lands, leaving them under the control of the monks at Beaulieu and settled in Gramat, then under the Count of Rouergue, and built the church of Saint Pierre. Etienne's brother Bernard would later become the Bishop of Cahors. Matfred's daughter, Ermetrude, married Hugues de Rouergue, who became the Count of Gramat in 960, the son of the Count of Haut-Quercy, Ermengol of Rouergue.
It was Hugues who seized the monastery of Beaulieu in 961 to reclaim lost lands and properties of his wife's family, receiving consent from the Count of Toulouse, William Taillefer I. Their son, Bernard II, became the abbot of Beaulieu in 981 and later Bishop of Cahors in 1005. Bernard's elder brother Robert became the next Baron of Gramat. He had two sons, Robert, known as Hugues and Bernard III. It was Hugues I who built a new castle on a hill in Prudhomat and called himself the first Baron of Castelnau.
Hugues I found himself in front of the Council of Limoges in 1031. He had seized and ransacked the Abbey of Beaulieu, driving out his brother who was the abbot and made himself lay abbot.
Text adapted from “Château de Castelnau-Bretenoux” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Château de Castelnau-Bretenoux ranks #5,100 of 9,079 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #446 of the 793 mapped in France. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 2,092 times in the last 60 days, more than 71% of the atlas. Wikidata records about 46,000 visitors in 2024. 2 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. It is one of the 45 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of the Dordogne. It is stop 27 of 29 on the Dordogne castle route, Bergerac to Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne. See how France compares in the castle statistics.
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