Châtillon, formerly known as Châtillon-d’Azergues, is a commune in the Rhône département in eastern France, Beaujolais region, 40 minutes by car from Lyon. The town was known under the name of Châtillon in 1793.
The main attraction of the city is Château de Châtillon-d’Azergues. the castle’s construction is dated to the 13th and 15th centuries. All that remains of the castle is the keep and a tower.
The 12th-13th century castle of Châtillon was mentioned for the first time in the agreement of 1173 between the count of Forez and the archbishop of Lyon, a treaty which definitively separated the counties of Forez and Lyonnais. Since the 11th-12th centuries, there has been a local seigneurial family which takes its name from the village, the Châtillon (not linked to Châtillon les Dombes): Amblard around 1100, Guillaume-Rainier in 1121, Dalmace in 1160 … In the 13th century , it is the Oingt family who owns Châtillon, at least since Guichard d’Oingt.
The site consists of a polygonal enceinte with several buildings from the 13th to 16th centuries. In the centre of the enceinte is the 13th century cylindrical keep. It is 30 m high and 9.5 m in diameter with walls 1.5 m thick. Only the ground floor was vaulted. During the 15th century, a hexagonal staircase towers was attached which asloserved the other buildings. The oldest part of the castle is a 12th-century rectangular building supported by very flat buttresses,connected to each other by blind arcades forming a decoration known as a frise lombarde (Lombardy frieze).
The castle is privately owned and closed to the public.
Right next to the castle, the Saint-Barthélémy chapel, known as Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, has several particularities: built in the 12th century on the site of an older building, it is in fact has two stacked chapels. The upper chapel has a corbelled apse. A Gothic portal was added in the 15th century and the whole was restored in the 19th century. The chapel was listed as a historic monument in 1862.
GPS coordinates: 45°52′44″N 4°38′43″E
