Château de Benauge, Medieval fortress in Arbis, France

Château de Benauge occupies the top of a castral motte in Porte-de-Benauge, between Cadillac and Targon in the Entre-deux-Mers. The site combines ditches, a vallum, lices, terraces, a keep, a chapel and two wall circuits reinforced with towers; entry was through a gate tower fitted with a portcullis and a machicolation. The visible complex has tan and grey walls, a crenellated block, a range with a shallow red-tiled roof and red-painted openings, and round towers with conical roofs.

Guillaume Amanieu, great-grandson of Duke Sanche IV Garcia of Gascony, had a keep built on a motte here in the 11th century. In 1253 Bernard de Gavarret-Bouville rebelled against Simon de Montfort, and Henry III of England besieged the castle in person from 28 September until it fell on 6 November; much of it was destroyed. Jean de Grailly rebuilt and enlarged it from 1266, giving it its present layout by 1300.

The castle gave its name to the viscountcy, then county, of Benauges, held by the Grailly family, who fought on the Anglo-Gascon side in the Hundred Years' War. Jaquette-Angélique de Wavrans, who received Benauge as a dowry in 1726, was nicknamed "la mauvaise comtesse" locally for reclaiming her seigneurial rights.

The castle stands on a hilltop south of the village, reached from the D231 towards Cadillac and then a small communal road on the left shortly after the hamlet of Le Chiche. The site is private property, still held by the Journu family, and its vallum, terraces and subsoil have been listed as monuments historiques since 1 September 1995.

The castle owes its survival to Jean de Foix-Candalle, who bought the seigneurie from the king of France in 1462 and so blocked the royal order to demolish it. In 1793, by contrast, the district of Cadillac had the château voted for demolition, and one half was sold as a bien national to a stonecutter who used it as a quarry.