Pastellière Castle, Medieval castle in Combrand, France.

Pastelliere Castle is a late 15th century structure with a rectangular main building and three round towers, surrounded by water-filled moats. The layout features low crenelated walls and a small drawbridge at the entrance, while the roofs combine regular slopes on the main body with pepper-pot designs topping the corner towers.

Built in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the castle still belonged to the La Pastellière family, documented since 1378, in 1641. In October 1704 Charles Durant, a Bressuire cloth merchant who had bought the town's perpetual mayoral office in 1703, acquired the seigneurie and his family took the name Durant de La Pastellière. In 1793 it served as a military hospital for wounded Vendéens, and in 1794 General Grignon's infernal column failed to burn it.

The Durant family, druggist-cloth merchants from Bressuire, gave the seigneurie its lasting name: after buying it in 1704 they added "de La Pastellière" to their own. Inside, the staircase's first landing carries two bays of eight-part rib vaults with a coat of arms on the keystone, and the straight flights turn left above basket-handle vaults.

The facades, roofs, interior staircase, moats, and corner towers have been protected as historical monuments since March 1988. Visitors should check with local information sources about current access rules, as castle grounds may not always be open for viewing.

The northeast corner tower carries a small chapel built against it, added in the moat angle rather than inside the main building. Look for the chapel volume attached to the round tower where the water moat turns.