Château de Blancafort, Historic castle in Blancafort, France.

Château de Blancafort stands in the heart of the village of Blancafort, in the Cher department. Its light beige stone walls and dark slate roofs form a complex of rectangular wings and round towers with conical roofs. A stone doorway with an arched opening and steps leads into the central section, and manicured green hedges and shaped bushes line a gravel path in front.

The castle was probably built after 1475 and finished in the early 16th century for François de Boucard and his wife Marguerite de Cugnac. The seigneurie is first mentioned in 1064 with a lord named Garnier, and it passed to the Boucard family through the marriage of Agnès de Blancafort to Jean de Boucard in the second half of the 14th century. Hélie de Sainte-Feyre, ruined and in debt, had the castle seized; the Parlement awarded it in 1619 to Claude de Faucon, whose Florentine family had come to France with Charles VIII. From 1781 to 1919 it belonged to the Duranti family, some of whose members were mayors of the village.

The seigneurie passed to the Boucard family through the marriage of Agnès de Blancafort to Jean de Boucard in the second half of the 14th century. In 1250 Jean II de Blancafort and his wife Jeanne de Pregrimault founded the chapel of Saint-Sylvain in the village church. A copy of a Holy Family by Mignard, painted by Charlotte de Duranti in 1834, is kept in that church.

The castle stands in the heart of Blancafort village in the Cher, in the Berry area known as Pays-Fort, near Gien on the route between Moulins and Paris. The gravel path in front of the façades passes clipped hedges and shaped bushes, so the building is seen from the village side rather than from a park.

The seigneurie of Blancafort is first recorded in 1064 with a lord named Garnier, four centuries before the present castle was begun for François de Boucard and Marguerite de Cugnac. The building passed by marriage from the Boucard to the Sainte-Feyre, then to Claude de Faucon, whose Florentine family had come to France with Charles VIII.