Château de Montbras, Renaissance castle in Montbras, France.

Château de Montbras is a Renaissance castle on a rock plateau above the left bank of the Meuse in Montbras. Of the original four-winged complex of 57 by 60 metres, only the east wing, about half of the north wing and four bastioned corner towers remain. The pale beige stone facades carry machicolations, a wall-walk and sculpted dormers; the south wing with its chapel burned down and was demolished.

The present castle was begun shortly after 11 August 1598, when Claude de Verrières and Louise de Salles bought the ruined old house of L'Isle-en-Bras from Louis de Vigneulles and Nicole de Merlet and moved to a higher site. Work on the 57 × 60 m four-winged plan with bastioned corner towers was interrupted by Louise's death around 1612. The south wing with the chapel later burned and was demolished; the west wing was gone before 1754.

The castle's name comes from the village that grew out of its former lower courtyard, while the older seat nearby was called L'Isle-en-Bras. The former stables of that courtyard have round-arched entrances whose keystones are carved as farm animals, and a massive round tower there once served as a dovecote. Today the main wing houses guest rooms, and the castle receives tourists and pilgrims on the Way of St. James.

The château is privately owned, so the frescoed halls, including the Danse des Topinamboucs and the Métamorphoses d'Ovide, cannot be visited. A restaurant has opened on site. The park on one side of the castle is not laid out, while the former lower courtyard on the other side forms the village of Montbras, where 18th- and 19th-century Lorraine farms enclose a square around a well worked by a Noël pump.

A continuous frieze of sculpted grotesque masks runs along the machicolations, setting this castle apart from other French Renaissance structures. This unusual ornamental choice reveals a more playful interpretation of classical Renaissance design than found in comparable castles of the era.