Like Amboise, Angers castle was built alongside the River Maine at a point to command a crossing.  The castle overlies part of the old defences of Roman Angers.  It was supposedly during the ninth century that the bishop of Angers gave the counts of Anjou permission to build a castle on the rock overlooking the crossing of the Loire.  As this was a Roman site and there was already an ancient church here, this permission may have anachronistic. 

Count Fulk (d.1040) certainly had a castle here and he is credited with building the surviving face of a hall structure at the summit of the rock face overlooking the Loire.  It is uncertain whether masonry defences covered this sheer rock faced side of the castle, but presumably early walls were built to the east of the hall for its defence, unless this was originally an unfortified place set on the crag.  As the caput of the Angevins it seems likely that some time and money was spent on fortifying this rock.

In 1204 the region was conquered from King John (d.1216) by King Philip Augustus (d.1223).  He seemed content to leave the fortifications as they were, but during the minority of his grandson, Louis IX (d.1270), his mother, Queen Blanche (d.1252) ordered the castle fortified in 1234 and it is her 17 great towers that now so dominate the district.  This new enceinte had great twin towered gatehouses to north and south, but left the cliff face as the main defence to the west and enclosed the old palace on the cliff top.  King Louis eventually gave the castle to his brother Charles (d.1285) in 1246.  In the 1260s Charles went on to conquer Like Amboise, Angers castle was built alongside the River Maine at a point to command a crossing.  The castle overlies part of the old defences of Roman Angers.  It was supposedly during the ninth century that the bishop of Angers gave the counts of Anjou permission to build a castle on the rock overlooking the crossing of the Loire.  As this was a Roman site and there was already an ancient church here, this permission may have anachronistic. 

Count Fulk (d.1040) certainly had a castle here and he is credited with building the surviving face of a hall structure at the summit of the rock face overlooking the Loire.  It is uncertain whether masonry defences covered this sheer rock faced side of the castle, but presumably early walls were built to the east of the hall for its defence, unless this was originally an unfortified place set on the crag.  As the caput of the Angevins it seems likely that some time and money was spent on fortifying this rock.

In 1204 the region was conquered from King John (d.1216) by King Philip Augustus (d.1223).  He seemed content to leave the fortifications as they were, but during the minority of his grandson, Louis IX (d.1270), his mother, Queen Blanche (d.) ordered the castle fortified in 1234 and it is her 17 great towers that now so dominate the district.  This new enceinte had great twin towered gatehouses to north and south, but left the cliff face as the main defence to the west and enclosed the old palace on the cliff top.  King Louis eventually gave the castle to his brother Charles in 1246.  In the 1260s Charles went on to conquer Sicily and become king.  The castle played its part in the Hundred Years War when the famous Apocalypse tapestries were made.  In 1585 during the Religious wars the castle fell to the Huguenots and King Henry III (d.1589) ordered it demolished, but the governor merely lowered the towers to house artillery, only the moulin tower surviving to nearly its full height.  The castle finally saw action in 1944 when it was used by the Germans and consequently bombed by the Americans.

Description
It is difficult to judge how Angers castle was formed.  Certainly the current walls form a revetment, although wether the interior of the castle has been totally artificially raised or not is a moot point without excavating the whole.  Certainly the west side must have been originally at this height as the place occupies this portion of the site.

Palace
The palace lay on the west side of the crag and was defended on its west side by a curtain revetting the crag.  This wall boasts 2 projecting rectangular turrets, the southern one being deeply splayed at the base.  This work is somewhat similar to the southern wall along the scarp at Chinon castle.  The curtain at the top of the crag rises some 25' high at its southern section when it is engulfed by the later thirteenth century work.  At the northern rectangular tower the wall cuts back eastwards to rejoin the rockface some 20' further east.  Possibly this marks the north to south extent of the original castle, the site now being occupied by the Chatelet.

Only the east wall of the hall survives to any degree.  This is entered via a fine Romanesque arch in a poor quality randomly laid rubble wall with fine limestone quoins.  The wall to the north is mainly gone, but to the south four later medieval windows survive.  Hidden above these are the upper arches of blocked Romanesque windows.  Within the southern ends of the hall are the foundations of a Roman church.

Castle
The main thirteenth century castle wall was built 10' thick and proceeds some 2,170' forming 3 sides of a box to bring it back to the cliff above the River Maine.  Within this perimeter are 17 great round towers each about 60' in diameter and originally about 130' high from their external base.  Only the moulin tower at the north-west corner of the enceinte has not been reduced dramatically in height to carry artillery.  The bulk of the enceinte consists of black shaley rock interspersed with courses of white limestone, making a very appealing pattern to the towers only.  The only place this colour scheme for the towers is not continued is at the south gate where both supporting towers are made of pure ashlar limestone.  The entrance gateway is much lower than the interior of the castle or the gateway into the north gate.  Quite clearly this ashlar gatehouse, on a different alignment to the rest of the castle, is an earlier build.  With its ‘Early English' pointed archway and no drawbridge it is probably Plantagenet in origin, although the tower has, like the rest of the castle been later altered for artillery with gun ports cut into the walls.  Quite possibly the while limestone built into the other towers comes from earlier, destroyed defences that once went with the south gatehouse.  As such the original landward side of the castle may have had more in common with looks of Loches and Chinon, before it was massively rebuilt in the mid thirteenth century.

Copyright©2021 Paul Martin Remfry