Château de Brametourte, founded in the 11th century, surveys a stunning panorama across 20 hectares of parkland, woods & sun-flowered fields towards the Pyrenean peaks.
Situated in the south of France, close to the award winning bastide village of Lautrec, central to three UNESCO World Heritage sites, Toulouse, Albi and Carcassonne, the tranquil beauty of this ancient home of Barons & Viscounts, belies its turbulent past. The castle was immersed in the religious fervour of Cathars, Knights of the Templar & the Wars of Religion. Sieged during the 1580s, it fell into disrepair and was left forgotten and frozen in time.
Nearly half a millennium later, the Château has been traditionally and ecologically restored; pioneering one of France’s first, self-sustainable medieval castles.
References:Goryōkaku (五稜郭) (literally, 'five-point fort') is a star fort in the Japanese city of Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido. The fortress was completed in 1866. It was the main fortress of the short-lived Republic of Ezo.
Goryōkaku was designed in 1855 by Takeda Ayasaburō and Jules Brunet. Their plans was based on the work of the French architect Vauban. The fortress was completed in 1866, two years before the collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate. It is shaped like a five-pointed star. This allowed for greater numbers of gun emplacements on its walls than a traditional Japanese fortress, and reduced the number of blind spots where a cannon could not fire.
The fort was built by the Tokugawa shogunate to protect the Tsugaru Strait against a possible invasion by the Meiji government.
Goryōkaku is famous as the site of the last battle of the Boshin War.