Château de Robert le Diable

The place

Perched above the Seine in Moulineaux, this fortress with eight towers overlooks the valley and is visible from the A13 motorway. Its origins date back to the year 1000, and the earliest written records mention it in 1180. John Lackland stayed here between 1199 and 1204, before Philippe Auguste dismantled it during the conquest of Normandy. Restored and then finally destroyed in the spring of 1418, as the English approached, it was merely a ruin when the industrialist Oscar Cosserat bought it in 1903 and entrusted its restoration to Lucien Lefort, a disciple of Viollet-le-Duc: the medieval silhouette visible today is this 20th-century restoration. Classified as a natural site at the request of Maurice Cosserat, listed in the General Inventory of Cultural Heritage, owned by the Metropolis since 2007, and restored by a social insertion project starting in 2009, it offers visitors a three-hectare park. Its name comes from the legend of Robert the Devil, a son that a duchess of Normandy supposedly obtained from the devil due to her inability to bear children.