Château de Fougères

This feudal château (12th - 15th centuries) constitutes a true testimony to the development of military architecture, illustrating 400 years of defensive techniques. Fougères needed this fortress because it was on the border of the barony in the time of the duchy.
First, in the late 10th century, a simple tower was built on this rocky isle, squeezed between the marshes. A stone building followed when this was destroyed by Henry II Plantagenêt. But it was in the 15th century that construction took on a new magnitude with the Raoul and Surienne towers and five floors of arrow loops.

Its plan with three defensive walls delivers even today a treatise on defence and strategy in the Middle Ages.