Château de Sully-sur-Loire

The château is the seat of the duc de Sully, Henri IV's minister Maximilien de Béthune (1560-1641), and the ducs de Sully. It is a château-fort, a true castle, built to control one of the few sites where the Loire can be forded; the site has perhaps been fortified since Gallo-Roman times, certainly since the beginning of the eleventh century. In 1218, Philip Augustus constructed a cylindrical keep to the south of the present enclosure, of which buried foundations remain. Guy de la Trémoille, inheriting the fortress, undertook the construction of the "Donjon", flanked by four towers, beginning in 1395. To one side was added the Petit Château in the sixteenth century to provide more agreeable accommodation; Sully remodelled it. Sully bought the domaine in 1602, enlarged the park and the fortress; he strengthened the embankments of the Loire to protect the town from occasional flooding.