Chateau de Pierrefonds

Pierrefonds was built around 1400, slighted in 1617 and left a ruin for two centuries until Napoleon III commissioned Viollet-le-Duc to restore it from 1857. What he produced is not a restoration in the modern sense: he completed the walls, roofs, sculpture and interiors according to his theory of what a fourteenth-century castle ought to have been, adding decoration and detail with no medieval evidence behind it, which makes the building a document of nineteenth-century ideas about the middle ages as much as of the middle ages. The result is spectacular and has been used repeatedly as a film and television location.

What you actually see

• The rebuilt exterior - complete towers, roofs and battlements as reimagined.
• The Viollet-le-Duc interiors - painted halls invented on nineteenth-century theory.
• The double defensive circuit - walls and towers around the courtyard.
• The sculpture - carved detail added during the restoration.

When to go

April to October; the castle closes on Mondays in low season. Autumn suits the setting above the village and lake. Weekends bring visitors from Paris.

Honest expectations

Much of what is seen is nineteenth-century invention rather than medieval fabric, which disappoints some visitors and fascinates others. Access without a car is limited. Interiors are sparsely furnished.

Nearby

Compiegne lies west; the forest surrounds both.