Beynac

Another day, another castle. This time, we're gonna get a little medieval on y'all.

The Chateau de Beynac predates the showboats on the Loire by several centuries. It wasn't built to impress visiting sovereigns, but rather to defeat them. Beynac figured prominently during the Hundred Years War as the French bastion on the Dordogne River, trading sieges with its mostly English-controlled rival on the south bank, Castlenaud (which we would visit a few days later).



More often than not, luxury in these castles meant a bigger leg of mutton and a fresh pile of hay to sleep on. But unlike their powdered-wig descendants in the Loire chateaux, the knights of Beynac did get to pour vats of boiling oil on their enemies, which couldn't have been all bad.