Châteauneuf-en-Auxois, Commarin and Panthier: The Fortress over the Burgundy Canal

The fortress of Châteauneuf — a square keep of the 12th century, a curtain wall and five towers added in the 14th, Flamboyant Gothic lodgings and a chapel in the 15th — stands 75 m by 35 m on a rock spur at 475 m, watching the south end of the Auxois above the valley of the Burgundy canal and one of the Plus Beaux Villages de France. Philippe le Bon gave it in 1457 to his counsellor Philippe Pot, who turned it into a comfortable residence; a replica of Pot's tomb, whose original at the Louvre shows him carried on the shoulders of eight black-stone mourners, stands in the tower of the Logis des Hôtes. Below, the Lac de Panthier is the largest lake in the Côte-d'Or and one of five reservoirs built to feed the canal, and at Commarin a moated château has never been sold, passing by marriage since the 13th century down the descent of the original Commarin family.