Château de Montrottier: A Medieval Fortified Residence in France
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Modern
- Civilizations
- Duchy of Savoy, French
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page14 sections
History
Château de Montrottier is a medieval fortified residence in Lovagny, France, established in the mid-thirteenth century in the architectural tradition of medieval Savoy. Built on a rocky hill above the valley and the crossing of the Fier, it guarded an important route between Chambéry and Geneva. A fortified post and customs station stood near the medieval ferry, while the castle occupied the summit above this strategic passage.
Origins and Savoyard lordship
The site may have held a defensive post during the Roman or late antique period and may also have included a watchtower in the eighth century. These early possibilities remain uncertain. The first documented appearance of the Montrottier family dates to 1263, in an act signed at Lovagny. The family held the surrounding lands as a fief, either from the counts of Geneva or from the lords of Pontverre.
In 1266, ownership passed to the de Grésy family, which retained the property for more than 150 years. In 1425, it came into the possession of Amadeus VIII of Savoy, later known as Antipope Felix V. He sold the estate and its buildings to Pierre de Menthon on 19 March 1427 for 9,000 florins.
The Menthon-Montrottier period
Pierre de Menthon was bailiff of the Genevois, a senior judicial and administrative officer, and served Savoy as a councillor and ambassador to Paris in 1417, Rome in 1432, and Genoa in 1441. After acquiring Montrottier, he undertook major construction, repairs, and improvements to its fortifications. His purchase founded the noble Menthon-Montrottier branch.
Pierre de Menthon died at the castle on 31 March 1455 from injuries received in a duel with Jean de Compey at Chambéry. His family continued to hold Montrottier until the French Revolution. The lands were raised to a barony in 1596 and became a county on 1 June 1632 under Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy.
Revolutionary change and nineteenth-century rebuilding
In 1796, the county was sold as national property to a Genevan consortium. It was later acquired by Bénédict Dufour and passed to his son, Guillaume-Henri Dufour, a Swiss engineer and military officer. The Dufour family sold the estate in 1839 to Baron Jules de Rochette.
During the de Rochette ownership, the baron’s wife remodelled the Logis des Comtes and replaced the staircase in the Logis des Chevaliers with a grand staircase. After Victor Frerejean purchased the estate in 1876, further reconstruction took place and the grand staircase was completed. Frerejean was a master of ironworks and former president of the Lyon Chamber of Commerce. He also held the rank of chevalier of the Legion of Honour and officer of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. The property later passed to his son, Georges Frerejean.
From private estate to museum
After the death of Marie-Louise Marès, Georges Frerejean’s widow, in 1906, the castle passed to her brother Léon Marès. A major collector of works of art and rare objects, Marès joined the Florimontane Academy, a learned society associated with Savoy and the Genevan region, in 1909. He named the Academy as heir to the castle and estate and died at Montrottier on 14 August 1916.
The Florimontane Academy took possession in 1919 and opened the castle as a museum. In accordance with Marès’s testamentary provisions, it arranged collections of paintings, art objects, furniture, arms, and other material throughout the buildings. The permanent exhibition survived the German occupation during the Second World War without damage.
The collections received the French legal designation Musée de France in 2003 under the law of 4 January 2002. The Academy has published research on Montrottier, its collections, its owners, and Léon Marès since 1949. This work appeared in the Revue savoisienne, including a recurring research section known as Les Glanes and later La lettre de Montrottier until 2022. A 2023 heritage report recommended gradually renewing the collections; the regional cultural-affairs committee approved the report in February 2024 and assigned its implementation to a specialist team.
Château de Montrottier is protected as a French historic monument. The keep, Logis des Chevaliers, and Tour des Religieuses were classified by an order of 1 September 1919. The surrounding grounds received classification on 5 January 1935, while the farm and remaining castle buildings received partial registration on 3 November 1987.
Remains
The surviving complex occupies a rocky summit encircled by the former bed of the Fier, known as the Grande-Fosse. Its lower enclosure follows the summit in a symmetrical pentagonal plan dating from the thirteenth century. Built of stone and brick, the fortress contains a cylindrical keep, the square Tour des Religieuses, the Logis des Comtes, the Logis des Chevaliers, smaller residential buildings, a guards’ building, and a court. Its elevated position extends across the hilly countryside toward Lake Annecy and Mont Blanc.
The towers and defensive works
The cylindrical keep
The cylindrical tower was originally the keep, or principal strong tower, and was built after 1425. Rounded stones, bricks, gravel, and tuff rubble form its fabric. It rises 35.6 metres and contains five floored levels, with walls more than 3 metres thick at the base. Large blocks create a slightly truncated, sloping base that forms a battered cone.
Triple rows of corbels support the machicolations, projecting parapets with openings through which defenders could discharge missiles. Three merlons facing the road to the southeast contain circular gun openings. Before the separate residential buildings were constructed, the entrance lay about 4 metres above ground level. The tower is now reached by a wooden footbridge from the Logis des Comtes. An 87-step staircase leads to the upper platform. Over different periods, the tower served as a storehouse, residence, and accommodation for the garrison.
The Tour des Religieuses
The square Tour des Religieuses, or Tower of the Nuns, is the oldest surviving building in the complex. Its core dates from the thirteenth or fourteenth century, and it stands at the southwestern corner. The rectangular tower measures approximately 8.5 by 12.5 metres and includes a crenellated corner watch turret.
Arrow slits pierce the base. The exterior wall is about 3 metres thick, while the courtyard side is about 1 metre thick. Beams rest on corbels rather than being embedded in the walls, an arrangement intended to reduce damp and make replacement easier. The crenellations are unequal in size. A corner turret added in the fourteenth century contains a suspended-string staircase. An ogival doorway opens into a room probably used as a guardroom, with large wall openings suggesting that artillery may also have been housed there. The staircase leads to the Salle des Armes on the first level and the Salle Orientale on the second.
Walls and enclosure
A curtain wall, a defensive wall linking or enclosing fortified buildings, connects the residential buildings with the Tour des Religieuses. The fortress also possessed a shield wall, a particularly strong defensive wall designed to bear the brunt of an attack, arranged at an angle of 140 degrees. The present entrance to the small open court passes through a relatively recent gate, probably created during the nineteenth-century alterations. During that period, one side of the court became a semi-open space after the castle had lost its main fortification function.
The residential buildings
Logis des Comtes
The three-storey Logis des Comtes, or Counts’ Lodging, is attributed to the building programme of Pierre de Menthon. It served as the owners’ residence. The building was extensively restored in 1860 while retaining a Renaissance architectural character, including mullioned windows.
Logis des Chevaliers
The three-storey Logis des Chevaliers, or Knights’ Lodging, accommodated relatives and important guests. It too was extensively restored in 1860, with Renaissance features such as mullioned windows. Its former reception hall, the Salle des Chevaliers, was built at the end of the fourteenth century. The rectangular room measures 8.5 by 17.5 metres and has walls 1.7 metres thick.
Renaissance cross-mullioned windows light the hall, whose entrance is surmounted by the Menthon-Montrottier coat of arms. A wooden ceiling is divided into eighteen coffers, and a fireplace stands opposite the entrance. The first-floor doorway lintel formerly carried the date 1344. The residential buildings, smaller living quarters, and guards’ building complete the built arrangement around the court.
Gardens and museum collections
During the nineteenth-century de Rochette period, terraces, three successive gardens on separate levels, and greenhouses were created with the assistance of the architect Francis Delimoges. The greenhouses have disappeared, while the terraces and the arrangement of the gardens remain part of the estate’s landscaped features.
The museum collections are housed within the castle and include arms and armour, earthenware, porcelain, glassware, Flemish and other tapestries, period furniture, lace, and rare objects from East Asia and Africa assembled by Léon Marès. Among the works are four German Renaissance bronze reliefs by Peter and Hans Vicher, sixteenth-century bronze casters in Nuremberg.
Five Brussels wall tapestries from the period of Louis XV depict hunts of deer, boar, hare, wolf, and fox. The collection also includes a fifteenth-century sculptural group of the Virgin of Pity with Saint John and Saint Mary Magdalene, as well as a fifteenth-century Great Pietà and Small Pietà in polychrome and gilded wood. A polychrome wooden statue of the Virgin dates from the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Other preserved works include a fifteenth-century chest bearing the royal arms of France and a painting representing Notre-Dame-de-Liesse church during the revolutionary period.
