La Barben Castle, Medieval fortress in Provence, France

La Barben Castle is a stone complex built on a slope in tan and grey masonry. On the left, a tall square tower with corner turrets rises above a pale wing with rows of rectangular windows and a curved double staircase against its facade. To the right and lower down, a massive rounded bastion of rough stone adjoins long wings with small windows, and a further block with a tiled roof sits at the front.

The castrum of Barbentum is first mentioned in 1064 in the cartulary of Saint-Victor Abbey, Marseille, though the castle was probably built before the year 1000. Held by the Pontevès family, it was sold in 1474 by King René to Jean II de Forbin, whose family kept it for nearly five hundred years, until 1963. On 4 November 1630 the Cascaveous revolt left it sacked and it was rebuilt; in the early 20th century an earthquake collapsed the keep, prompting work to straighten the castle.

The gardens, probably laid out by Le Nôtre, form a formal design with two entrance posterns, a plane-tree avenue, porticoes, a canal, four basins, two fountains and terraces. The medieval towers were converted around 1650 into pavilions topped with merlons and machicolations. The Forbins kept the castle for nearly five hundred years, until 1963.

The castle is in La Barben, near Salon-de-Provence. Since 2019 it has housed the Rocher Mistral theme park on Provence, which is separate from the La Barben animal park. The gardens, classified with the castle in 1984, have a plane-tree avenue, four basins and two fountains.

The zoo and wildlife park of La Barben is a separate attraction with no link to the castle, created in 1971 by André Pons, the agricultural engineer who bought the castle in 1963 and opened it to the public in 1965. The castle itself now houses the Rocher Mistral, a Provence-themed park installed after Vianney Audemard d'Alançon bought it on 31 December 2019.