Château de Rochechouart

The castle's history began around the year 1000 by the fortification by the Viscounts of Limoges a rocky outcrop overlooking the seed. The castle, whose tower dates from the twelfth century, and the majority of the fifteenth century building is situated above the confluence of the Seed and Vayres in the town of Rochechouart. Until 1470, the lordship is the stronghold of a younger branch of the Viscounts of Limoges. Of the old fortress there remains only the gatehouse to the drawbridge that maintains one of the towers of the thirteenth century. During the Revolution, an attempt to demolish the castle.

The revolutionaries succeeded only demolished the top two towers that frame the front southeast. The castle was bought by the department in 1836, during the reign of Louis Philippe. He began his restoration to the same. Between 1858 and 1859, the early campaigns of restoration is being conducted by the department of historic monuments in the castle to install the sub-prefecture and town hall in the reign of Napoleon III. Today, it houses the sub-prefecture, and since 1985 the Museum of Contemporary Art where you can admire the bottom Raoul Hausmann, Dada artist, and works by international artists of the 60s to today, such as Giuseppe Penone, Arte Povera, Christian Boltanski and Tony Cragg.

We can also see collections of flint axes, cut and polished stones, bones of prehistoric times, reconstructions of hypocausts from Chassenon, pottery discovered in Auvergne and in the Charentes. Three exhibitions held there each year. You can also visit the room which houses hunts polychrome frescoes from the early sixteenth century, representing a deer, and the room of Hercules adorned with murals in grisaille of the mid-sixteenth century. In the courtyard you can admire the gallery supported by twisted columns.