Château de la Rochette, Medieval castle in Saint-Maurice-des-Champs, France.
Château de la Rochette is a castle in Saint-Maurice-des-Champs featuring a rectangular layout with three U-shaped wings set across extensive grounds. Four towers, including one square tower and three round ones, punctuate the structure which sits within a large wooded property and formal park area.
Repairs were carried out at the castle by the Saint-Vincent de Chalon chapter in 1406 and 1407. After Calvinist damage, the canons sold the fief in 1592 to Louis de Rymon and François Royer; Rymon rebuilt it almost entirely, adding four towers, new walls and gun ports. In 1659 Gabriel de Hénin-Liétard attended, in Paris before Louis XIV and Mazarin, the signing of his half-sister Charlotte's marriage contract with d'Artagnan.
The castle holds a connection to literature as Gabriel de Hénin-Liétard witnessed his sister's marriage contract with Charles de Batz-Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, in 1659.
The property is currently closed to public visits and can only be viewed from the surrounding areas. The extensive woodland and park grounds form the outer boundary of the private estate.
The castle passed in 1750 to Claude-Philibert de La Vernette, whose descendants kept it for two centuries. In October 1973 the Saint-Louis Saint-Benoît school, a free confessional school founded in the Hautes-Alpes in 1971, moved in, succeeding the earlier school of Les Presles. An Italian entrepreneur, Luigi Castiglione, bought the property in 2000.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 94,536 contributors worldwide.