Chateau de Hautefort - Visits

The outside visit

AM PM Information
February * 2pm to 6pm Week-ends
March * 2pm to 6pm Every day
April, May 10am to12.30am 2pm to 6.30pm Every day
June, July, August, Sept. 9.30am to 7pm Every day
October * 2pm to 6pm Every day
November * 2pm to 6pm Week-ends, BankHolidays
December, January * * Closed

* During this period in the year, the castle receives groups of 20 persons and more on appointment

For individual visitors:
Self-guided tours (novelty 2005)

For groups of visitors on appointment:
Guided tours in French, English and Spanish (05 53 50 51 23)

The English park was created in the XIXth century. It is 30 hectares long and gets 7km of alleys. On the first ground, a cedar of Lebanon stands (the eldest in the park). It is known to be more than 250 years old and would have resisted to the tempest in 1999.
In front of the chateau, there are terraces and borders with arabesque and motif skillfully kept up.

The inside visit
The rebuilding of Hautefort Castle in the17th century according to an ambitious blueprint was accompanied by French gardens laid out in front of its lateral west facade.

One of the most renowned landscape artists of the time, the count of Choulot, undertook to completely redesign the park and gardens in 1853. He achieved an ambitious plan at Hautefort, which integrates the castle, the gardens, the park and the scenery in a coherent whole. The English park featured several factories, a large variety of plantations as well as an artificial lake, which was created in the middle of the major woods, practically at the top of the hill.

After the baroness of Bastard bought the domain in 1929, most of the major work was carried out in the approaches to the castle. To the west, a gallery of greenery coupled with a plot of box trees replaced the old commons destroyed in the 19th century. At the foot of the castle, the plots to the east and south, created by Choulot, conserve their major contours but have been completely replanted with pruned box trees interspersed with very colourful flowerbeds. To the north, the terrace is also planted with box trees and column-shaped pruned yews.

The gardens, classified as Historical Monuments, contribute significantly today to the domain's renown and the pleasure of the tour.

The site

Hautefort Castle is distinguished by its atypical characteristics. It is a classic castle perched on a rocky spur. Classic castles, which are generally built on plains, open out widely onto gardens. Hautefort is not an ex-nihilistic creation. It was originally a medieval fortress, which was most probably built on the site of a Roman camp.

The medieval fortress

In the IXth century, the castrum de Autafort, belonged to powerful Limoges viscounts. The strategic importance of this fortress was asserted during the Guyenne wars between the Plantagenets and Capetians. The owners, Constantin and Bertran de Born, enemy brothers, supported different camps. The castle thus underwent several sieges, including that of Richard Lionheart in 1183, before Bertran de Born, the famous warrior-troubadour, raised it from its ruins.
The medieval fortress was composed of a keep linked by facades to other towers: Palm Tower, Long Tower, Prison Tower...

The classic castle

Hautefort Castle and the old village Hospice are rare examples of classic architecture in the Perigord. If Hauteforts architecture is radically different from the architecture of castles in the region, notably medieval fortresses or Renaissance castles with powerful mass effects, it is because its history was different and because it belonged to a different world. The social ascension of the marquises of Hautefort led them to live in the court of France in intellectual and artistic circles that were different from their original sphere. This led to the exogenous nature of their castle whose construction lasted an entire century, from the end of the XVIth century to the end of the XVIIth century. It was spearheaded by two architects who were foreign to the land, a man from Lorraine (Nicolas Rambourg) and a Parisian (Jacques Maigret), who almost tore down the medieval buildings totally.*

The body of the central building, punctuated with angle pavilions on both sides, is flanked on both sides with T-square wings ending with round towers crowned with turret domes.
*Jean-Pierre Babelon Hautefort, special edition of "Connaissance des arts" N°155

Schedules

Ouvert du 1er mars au 11 novembre

Mars : week-ends et jours fériés de 14h à 18h

Avril et Mai : tous les jours de 10h à 12h30 et de 14h à 18h30

Juin, Juillet et Août : tous les jours de 9h30 à 19h
Juillet et août : nocturnes avec "La nuit, au château...", les mercredis du 11 juillet au 22 août 2012. Billetterie à 21h15 et spectacle à 22h (durée : 1h).

Septembre : tous les jours de 10h à 18h

Octobre : tous les jours de 14h à 18h

Novembre du 1er au 11 : week-ends et jours fériés de 14h à 18h

Les heures indiquées ci-dessus sont celles du château, la billetterie ferme ses portes au public 30 mn avant la fermeture du château.
Durée de la visite : 1h30 à 2h