Château de Beynac

It is a medieval building, austere-looking, perched on top of a limestone cliff overlooking the village on the right bank of the Dordogne. The castle has the shape of an irregular quadrilateral extended to the south by a rocky bastion. The stern tower, topped with battlements, dates from the thirteenth century. Protected side of the plate with a double wall, the castle overlooks the Dordogne than 150 m.

The castle was built in the twelfth century by the barons of Beynac to lock the valley. The sheer drop is enough to discourage climbing the valley side, the defenses accumulated next plateau: double crenellated walls, double moat which deepened a ravelin a natural, double barbican.

At the death of Adhemar de Beynac (1147-1189), died without issue crossover, Richard the Lion Heart of England offers to Beynac Mercadier, his faithful road. This is assassinated in Bordeaux in 1200 and the barony returns to the family of origin. At the time of the Hundred Years War, the fortress of Beynac is one of the French strongholds. The Dordogne is used as the border between France and England, not far away, on the other side of the Dordogne, the Castle of Castelnaud was in English hands.

The oldest part of the castle is a large square Norman keep, dizzying, with few openings, stapled to a gatehouse and a watchtower, a docked cage spiral staircase, thin as a buttress and terminated by a crenellated terrace. On one side of a house the same time it is juxtaposed, and has been reworked and enlarged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On the other hand, it's a house party in the fourteenth century, which are attached a courtyard and a square plan staircase serving flats of the seventeenth century. The apartments have preserved woodwork and a painted ceiling of the seventeenth century, the Hall of States maintains a Renaissance fireplace carved bucranes, this room overlooks a small oratory fully clothed, in the fifteenth century frescoes including a Pietà, a Saint Christopher , a Last Supper in which Saint Martial is the butler.

One can also see sumptuous tapestries depicting hunting scenes and other scenes from the life of the lords of the time.