Châlus: Richard the Lionheart's Last Siege and the Château de Montbrun

Required Activities

• Stand at the foot of the keep at Chalus-Chabrol, where a garrison of 38 people including women and children held out against Mercadier, then find in the castle chapel the spot where Richard insisted his entrails be buried, with the cement effigy of him laid in front of it

• Find the tower of Chalus-Maulmont on the opposite promontory, which Chalus postcards and souvenirs sold for a century as the tower the bolt was fired from, and settle it for yourself: Geraud de Maulmont did not build it until 1275 to 1280, three-quarters of a century after Richard died

• From the edge of the ponds at Montbrun, the house of Pierre Brun who commanded the garrison beside Pierre Basile in 1199, pick out the two castles in one: the tall Romanesque keep crowned with machicolations in the 14th century, and the 15th-century logis behind it with four corner towers and big mullioned windows nobody could have defended

• Walk from one castle to the other down to the old mill where the Tardoire cuts between the two promontories, then up into the Fort quarter, where the houses of the rue Gourdon are built against what is left of Maulmont's curtain wall