Château d'Uzès

The Château d'Uzès (or the Duchy) is an 11th-century fortified castle in the medieval town of Uzès in the Gard department of Occitanie, France.

The fortified town and its fortified castle were then built (then remodeled over time) on the site of the previous castrum, with its ramparts, its corner towers, its 42 -metre keep, built by Bermond I of Uzès in the 12th century, its lordly dwelling (with a 16th-century Renaissance façade), its thousand-year-old cellars, and its flamboyant Gothic castle chapel from the 16th century (with a roof in glazed Burgundy tiles with the coat of arms of Antoine de Crussol,the 1st Duke of Uzès, from the 16th century, of the House of Crussol.

[2] While the Protestant Viscount of Uzès Antoine de Crussol (of the House of Crussol) worked to try to reconcile Catholics and Protestants in the south of France, King Charles IX established Uzès as a duchy in 1565 and named him 1st Duke of Uzès, then Duke and peer of France in February 1572 (in the Peerage of France), before the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 24 August in Paris, and the Duke's conversion to Catholicism.

The 10th Duke of Uzès, Marie François Emmanuel de Crussol, bought the castle back during the Second Restoration in 1824, before it became a college again following the financial difficulties of his successors.

[4] The alignment of the three towers-dungeons of Uzès symbolizes the three forms of royal, episcopal, and ducal powers of the Middle Ages, with:[5]