Château de Sainte-Mère

The castle of Sainte-Mere is a castle-type "Gascon," built in the second half of the thirteenth century (probably around 1277) in the town of Sainte-Mere. The castle was built around 1277 by Bishop Gerald Lectoure Monlezun (1268-to 1295). We owe to the bishop most of the cathedral Lectoure and especially the coverage of the nave in intersecting ribs (destroyed during the wars of religion).

It has long been regarded as the "castle Gascon" was part of a line of defense between the English and French possessions, as the argument of the scholar Philippe Lauzun in the nineteenth century. This hypothesis is still being frequently put forward, but none is known if war was support, it was fought in the 1970s by historian Jacques Gardelles and is no longer considered valid. At most it could serve as lookout, in visual contact with its neighbor to the castle Rouillac Gimbrède (local legend claimed that underground connected the two castles).

The castle has only been the residence of the bishops Lectoure from the manufacturer, Geraud Monlezun to the last, Emmanuel-Louis de Cugnac to the Revolution. According to Gilles Séraphin, the castle was burned in 1600. Sold as national property during the Revolution, it was stripped of its interior but the building itself survived without too much damage, except for gaps in the walls to retrieve the stones. The site was ranked in 1943, and the castle was declared a historic monument in 1977.