Château de Nobles
A manor below Brancion with round towers, cannon ports and a richly carved Renaissance doorway.
- Manor
- 57 min from Beaune
- Private, seen from outside
- 12th to 16th century
€200one way from Beaune with a private driver
At a glance
- Commune
- La Chapelle-sous-Brancion · Saône-et-Loire
- Style
- Medieval manor with Renaissance details
- Heritage
- Registered historic monument
Getting there
Private driver from Beaune: 57 min by road (70 km), €200 one way for the whole car.
Or add it to our full-day wine tour plus two hours, €700.
Coming by train or plane? Transfers from stations and airports →
About the château
The château of Nobles stands on a slope at La Chapelle-sous-Brancion, just below the fortress of Brancion. Round towers pierced with cannon ports frame a main house with a carved Renaissance doorway and a monumental fireplace. For centuries it belonged to the Nanton and then the La Baume families.
History
Agnès de Marchand, lady of Nobles, married Hardouin de Nanton, and their son Antoine is recorded as lord of Nobles in 1370. The Nanton family, from the Mâconnais, kept the estate for two centuries and also held the lordship of Cruzille nearby. In 1503 Louis de Nanton, husband of Françoise de Bellecombe, was lord of Cruzille, Nobles and several other estates.
At the end of the 16th century Philiberte de Feurs, a Renaissance woman of letters and widow of the last François de Nanton, brought the lordship by remarriage to Jean de La Baume. His family kept it until the end of the Ancien Régime. The château was pillaged and partly destroyed at the Revolution, and in 1856 restoration work removed what remained of its fortifications.
Architecture
The main house has a hipped roof and a round tower with a conical roof at each end, pierced with cannon ports near the top. A square tower on the east front overlooks a farmyard entered from the south. A Renaissance doorway between fluted pilasters opens onto a wide spiral stair, beside a twin window with scale-carved columns. Upstairs, a great fireplace rests on four fluted Ionic columns.
Visiting
Tips for your visit
Nobles is a private home and is not open to visitors, so please respect the owners' privacy. It lies just below Brancion, so it fits naturally into a visit to the fortress, its car-free village and its Romanesque church. The fortress of Brancion is open daily from April to mid-November.
Around here
What to combine with Château de Nobles on the same day, nearest first.
Questions
Château de Nobles is about 57 min from Beaune by road (70 km). With a private driver, the trip from Beaune starts at €200 for the whole car, up to 4 guests.
Did you know? The Nanton family owned both Nobles and nearby Cruzille for generations, and they preferred to live here at Nobles, rarely staying long at their castle in Cruzille.
Sources
Château de Nobles with a private driver
€200 one way from Beaune · up to 4 guests