Château de Luc
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Castle of Luc (Le Château de Luc) is a French castle-ruin in the town of Luc in the Lozère département, in the Languedoc-Roussillon région. It was built in the 12th century on a previous Celtic site.
The castle guarded a link to the South of France of the Auvergne frequently used by pilgrims of Saint Gilles, a strategic point between the two provinces of Gévaudan and Vivarais.
The first 100 years or so of its existence it was the home of the Luc family. In the 13th century it became the property of other regional seigneuraleses. During the Hundred Years' War it withstood a number of sieges. During the 16th century Wars of Religion the state of Gévaudan garrisoned the castle. Around 1630 the castle was dismantled under orders of Richelieu. During the period surrounding the French Revolution it continued to fall apart from neglect. In 1878 local parishioners renovated the dungeon (tower) into a chapel, installing a shrine to the Virgin Mary. In that same year, Robert Louis Stevenson passed through on his travel-adventure and documented in Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes:
| ..[the hill] came to a point in the ruins of the castle of Luc, which pricked up impudently from below my feet, carrying on a pinnacle a tall white statue of Our Lady, which, I heard with interest, weighed fifty quintals, and was to be dedicated on the 6th of October... Luc itself was a straggling double file of houses wedged between hill and river. It had no beauty, nor was there any notable feature, save the old castle overhead with its fifty quintals of brand-new Madonna. |
It remains in ruins today and attracts hikers who re-trace Stevenson's route.
