Château de Gisors

Gisors Castle, located in the Norman Vexin, is built on a motte. It consists of a circular tower was added to an already existing fortress. Essentially the work of the Dukes of Normandy from the eleventh to twelfth century, the frontier fortress was to defend the Anglo-Norman against the pretensions of the king of France. The castle is the subject of a classification as historic monuments by the list of 1862. The origins of this fortress date back to the second half of the eleventh century.

A motte was built from 1097 by Robert II of Bellême on the orders of King William II of England Roux (1087-1100), regent of the Duchy of Normandy. It is completed a year later by a tower of wood, probably surrounded by a palisade. In 1113, this fortified site overlooking the valley of the Epte, hosts a meeting between sovereign Louis VI of France and Henry I Beauclerc England. He knows his first seat in 1120, when the rebellion against the Norman lords British Trusteeship. The stronghold, defended by Governor Robert de Chandos had good hold on, this serious warning will lead the English sovereign to judge safer to rethink the fortifications, which will be taken from 1123.

This first reconstruction campaign will see the addition of a dungeon stone octagonal, surrounded by a rampart in large machine (the speaker-bass). Henry I Beauclerc disappears in 1135, leaving no male heir. His daughter Empress Matilda, widow of Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, departed from the throne, married a noble Angevin Geoffrey Plantagenet, who becomes Duke of Normandy, while at the same time, the throne of England is told Stephen of Blois. The death of the latter in 1154 without male heir, is the son of Geoffrey the new king of England, and inaugurates a new era: that of the Plantagenets.