Rochechouart Castle

The Château de Rochechouart stands on a remarkable geological site: the impact crater of a meteorite that fell about 214 million years ago. Impactite stones (earth rocks modified by impact) were used in its construction.

Departmental Museum of Contemporary Art © JL_Kokel-CRTNA

A castle that imposes

Erected on a rocky promontory of breach, witness to a meteorite fallen more than 200 million years ago, Rochechouart impresses with the proud and majestic appearance of its walls and its towers audaciously raised above the Seed.

Rochechouart Museum ©Haute-Vienne Tourism – Laetis-CRTNA

The history of the castle

Already busy the Gallo-Roman period, then by an oratory founded in 805 by Roger, Count of Limoges, the site will host the imposing fortified castle, witness to the power of its builders. In the XNUMXth century, the break-up of the county of Limoges favored the emergence of viscounts, including that of Rochechouart and his house, born of the marriage of Aymeric 1st, brother of the Viscount of Limoges, with Eve d'Angoulème. As a result, she will be the ally of Richard Lion's Heart during the Franco-British conflict. From the first castle until the XNUMXth century, we know very little: probably a simple tower at the start, then a larger enclosure next to a convent, the first nucleus of a town that will become important. Guyenne was attached to France in 1259 and the last Aymeric fortified Rochechouart which, transformed in the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, resisted the attacks of the Plantagenets and the Black Prince until the end of the Hundred Years' War.

The castle also became the seat of the sub-prefecture of Rochechouart and shelters a contemporary art museum where the exhibited works are harmoniously based on the historical dimension of the place.

The contemporary art museum

Since 1985, the castle has housed the Department's Museum of Contemporary Art.
Landscape, history and imagination are the three major themes that presided over the creation of this institution by the General Council of Haute-Vienne. In a remarkable XNUMXth century building, the dialogue between heritage and creation has enabled the constitution of a demanding collection of contemporary art as well as the creation of works more specific to the site.

In 1989, with the constitution of the Raoul Hausmann fund (with 600 works, and many archives) the Museum has found its tutelary figure with the famous Dadaist.