Le Château de Trigance

The date of its construction raises many questions: no document authorises us to advance it in a sure and definitive way.

Some believe that the monks of the Abbey of Saint Victor built this meditation fortress in the 9th century.

Others, however, believe that the castle was only built later, in the 11th century.

A true witness to history, the castle was home to two main lordly families: the Demandolx and the Valbelle, who succeeded each other between the 15th and 18th centuries at the head of the fiefdom of Trigance.

Nevertheless, it was uninhabited from 1730-1740 onwards, as the last lords, occupying different political functions in Provence, gradually abandoned their mountain castle (until the French Revolution stripped it of its legitimacy and accentuated its degradation).

The castle has an enclosure originally flanked by four round towers, the fourth of which dates from the 11th century and has been completely demolished.

The three remaining towers are of different architecture due to their successive construction.

Built of ashlar, they are pierced with loopholes intended for observation, or even for throwing projectiles in the event of war.

One of the towers rose up to 18 metres into the sky, and the castle had no less than four storeys.

The northwest tower was built in 1108, while the other two were built in the 15th and 16th centuries respectively.

A vast maze of underground rooms, corridors, staircases, cisterns (in one tower there was a cistern of sufficient capacity and volume to supply an entire garrison during a siege of several months) and dungeons, testifies to the importance of the place.