Chateau de Montbeliard

The Chateau de Montbeliard is a fortress placed on an outcropping rock that overlooks the town of Montbeliard in the Doubs departement of France. Since 1996, it's been categorised as a monument historique by way of the French Ministry of Culture. The assets of the commune, it is open to the public. It is assumed that there was a castle on the web site since the Gallo-Roman times, though then it become handiest a timber watchtower performing as an statement post for the defence of the metropolis of Mandeure Epomanduodurum.

Until 1397, the castle belonged to the Montfaucon family. The marriage of Henriette d'Orbe to Eberhard IV, son of the rely Eberhard III of Württemberg, transferred the ownership of the fortress to the Wurttemberg family. It changed into the house of Sophia Dorothea of Brandenburg-Schwedt, mother of Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia. In 1793, the castle have become a part of Revolutionary France. It served as a garrison till 1933, whilst it become transformed right into a records museum.

The castle was as soon as divided into components around the historical Church of Saint-Maimbœuf that ruled the esplanade of the castle with its excessive belltower. The Chatel-Derriere lower back of the castle, in the east, had imposing towers courting from time immemorial. It contained the reception and the private residences of the counts and dukes who followed one another, first inside the county after which within the principality. This a part of the fortress turned into separated by means of a huge and deep ditch which does now not exist today, spanned through a drawbridge.