Castelnaud

Standing guard over our favorite bakery in Castelnaud-la-Chapelle is the Château de Castelnaud. We visited with our friends S & B during the week before Christmas on one of the rare sunny days of our two months in the Dordogne. (S & B get all the credit – they brought the sun with them on the day they arrived and it started to rain as we got back after taking them to the train station.)

Some serious money has obviously been spent on the castle – check out the 1966 picture in the lower right:

The castle has commanding views of the Dordogne Valley:

The Jardins de Marqueyssac (our last post) are on the left, La Roque-Gageac is to the right

But its most interesting feature is the museum of medieval arms and armor that it houses. We had no idea crossbows were works of art!

Not much aiming required here, on the other hand

The big trebuchets are definitely the stars of the show. A video showed how they operated (two shots an hour) and included footage of the effect of one of these throwing stones against the castle wall. (It made a pretty big mess – we can only assume they were allowed to do it because the wall was about to be refurbished…)