France
The Château de Montfort is a castle in the French commune of Vitrac in the Dordogne département, part of the region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
The castle clings to a promontory overlooking the Cingle de Montfort (Montfort Meander) on the Dordogne. Its grandiose setting "aroused the envy of those who wished to rule Périgord" so that its history is a long series of battles and sieges. It was taken and razed to the ground by order of Simon de Montfort in 1214. Abbot Guy of Vaux-de-Cernay led the demolition party. The castle was later rebuilt, but again destroyed another three times: during the Hundred Years' War, under Louis XI of France and on the instructions of Henri IV of France.
Renovation work was carried out in the 19th century and gives the castle a "whimsical look of a stage setting for light opera."
Text adapted from “Château de Montfort” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Château de Montfort ranks #2,382 of 9,035 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #186 of the 787 mapped in France. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 3,570 times in the last 60 days, more than 81% of the atlas. 14 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 25 of 29 on the Dordogne castle route, Bergerac to Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne. See how France compares in the castle statistics.
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