Guedelon Castle

Guedelon is an experiment: a group began in 1997 to build a castle from nothing using only the techniques available around 1250, and they are still at it. Stone is quarried on site, lime is burned in a wood-fired kiln, iron is smithed from local ore, tiles are made from local clay, ropes are twisted by hand and a treadwheel crane powered by two people walking inside it lifts the blocks. A working watermill grinds flour. Nothing modern is used in the fabric, which means the site doubles as research: archaeologists learn from problems the builders hit that documents never recorded.

History

The idea grew out of Michel Guyot's restoration of the Château de Saint-Fargeau, which he bought in ruins in 1979: in late 1995 his team found medieval foundations beneath the later brick castle and drew up a plan of the original. Guyot then set out to build a new castle on the medieval model, raising €400,000 in five months of 1997 from the European Union, local and national governments and companies. A former sandstone quarry in the woods near Treigny was chosen for its height and for the stone, wood and water at hand, which would have been costly to bring in during the Middle Ages; the first stone was laid on 20 June 1997, and the site opened to the public in 1998, when the walls stood a metre high. By June 2010 the great tower reached 15 metres, by 2014 about 300,000 people came a year, and techniques worked out here were used in rebuilding Notre-Dame de Paris after its 2019 fire (Wikipedia, Guédelon Castle).

What's there

• The treadwheel crane - a human-powered hoist lifting cut stone.
• The quarry and lime kiln - raw materials produced on site.
• The workshops - blacksmiths, tilers, rope makers and carpenters working.
• The watermill - a reconstructed medieval mill grinding grain.

When to go

The site opens roughly April to early November and closes entirely in winter. Weekdays outside school holidays are calmest. Work stops in heavy rain, so a dry day shows more.

Good to know

It is a construction site, so the ground is rough and dusty and some areas are closed while work proceeds. Most explanation is in French with some English. Completion is decades away by design.

Nearby

Saint-Fargeau lies north; Auxerre is northeast.

Key facts