The Castle of Captain Fracasse

The castle of Castillon is one of the most beautiful of the Landes department.

The castle consists of a main building flanked by high pavilions, the gate pavilion and the corner pavilions of the courtyard of honor, all treated in a simple half-boss architecture. The interiors have been modernized.

Typical of the Louis XIII period, Théophile Gautier, born in Tarbes in 1811, was a member of the owners' family and stayed there.
Impressed by the manor house, he used it as a setting for his most famous work "Capitaine Fracasse" whose first chapter entitled "Le château de la misère" (The Castle of Misery) begins in this way: "On the reverse side of one of these gaunt hills which hump the Landes, between Dax and Mont-de-Marsan, stood, during the reign of Louis XIII, one of these gentleman's cottages which are so common in Gascony, and which the villagers decorate with the name of a castle".

The castle has elegant dormer windows, roofs and facades, and French gardens designed by the landscape architect André.

The facades and roofs of the castle, with the exception of the modern pavilion built to the right of the main building, are listed as historical monuments by order of December 9, 1948.

 

Castle of Castillon,

345, Route de Morcenx

40110 Arengosse

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

(free version)

 


To go further....

Capitaine Fracasse

Click on the image

Also to be seen in the department

Le Cryptoportique

Sur les traces des Moines, ... le Monastère Saint-Jean Baptiste de Sorde l'Abbaye

placeSorde l'Abbaye – Landes 
label Religious, mystical & pagan cults  
La Fontaine miraculeuse de Saint-Jean de Bourricos

The Miraculous Fountain of Saint John of Bourricos

placePontenx - Landes 
label Saints, healers and other miracles... Just for the fun... Religious, mystical & pagan cults  

La caille, c'est Caillor...

placeSarbazan - Landes 
label Gastronomy [to eat]  
François Mitterrand et son chien Baltique

Le Président et Baltique

placeSoustons - Landes
 
label People from here  

Discover the regions of the Great South