Château de Chenaux, Estavayer‑le‑Lac

Chenaux Castle stands on a hill above Lake Neuchâtel and follows the Savoyard square plan, a compact fortified enclosure typical of the region. The complex is dominated by a tall round main defensive tower, 33 metres in height, placed at the southern corner of the enclosure. Broad, water‑filled moats originally surrounded the hilltop, giving the castle its French name of “Château de Chenaux,” literally “Castle of the Canals.”

The outer fortified gateway, known locally as the Jaquemart, dates to the fifteenth century and was strengthened in the 1430s. This outer gateway was constructed in molasse, a soft sandstone, and was later fitted with projecting openings for vertical defence called machicolations, first added as the entrance was rebuilt and then further heightened with brickwork and annexes around 1503. A southern gate tower built about 1450 controlled the main access route.

A covered brick bridge decorated with a frieze links the square gate tower to the round main tower and served as a protected defensive walkway. That bridge reaches a circular defensive projection called a rondel (a small round defensive platform), where a second bridge from the southeast met the circuit. At that junction a separate gate structure stood, fitted with heavy machicolations, and a drawbridge is recorded for the principal entrance in earlier phases.

On the north‑west side two large round brick towers, built about 1502–1503, defend the three‑winged residential block; these are known as the West Tower and the Red Tower. A smaller rounded corner turret on the east side, called the Pigeonnier (a dovecote‑style turret), projects from the wall in a pepperbox form. Much of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth‑century work uses brick; some of the brickwork shows techniques associated with masons from Piedmont or Lombardy, while a master mason undertook the large tower works of the early sixteenth century.

Evidence of earlier wooden defences survives in the record for the castle’s first phases: before 1300 the donjon carried hourds (wooden roofed hoardings) and a wooden hoarding protected the gate, while a well and a drawbridge served the inner court. The main defensive tower originally had walls about 2.5 metres thick at its base. The ground floor of the residential wings retains Gothic features, including four larger Gothic windows and several narrow slit openings that reflect earlier defensive apertures.

The main residential block forms three wings with the highest mass on the south‑west side; low annexes run between that wing and the base of the main tower, connected by an elevated walkway. From the lakeside, the upper levels display eleven vertical window axes, with the two northernmost spanning two floors and the remaining nine set as two‑storey openings with smaller attic windows beneath the roof. An eighteenth‑century north‑east wing in Baroque style, with a mansard hipped roof, dormer and three round‑arched ground‑floor entrances, adjoins the eastern part of the courtyard and appears to have served economic or service functions.

Restoration in the early twentieth century conserved many of the standing structures, although several ornate chimneys were removed in that period. The main tower has a documented history as a prison; today that part of the building accommodates administrative offices, including the prefecture and the land‑registry. A landslide beneath the site reported in 2017 involved roughly 750 cubic metres of material and affected the ground below the castle.