The trebuchet demonstrations at Castelnaud

The thing almost every article gets wrong

There are two sets of siege engines at Castelnaud and they do different jobs. Along the bastion stand full-scale reconstructions in attack positions — trebuchet, mangonneau, pierrière, bombarde, bricole. They are there to be walked around and understood at the size the real things were. They are not loaded and they are not released. The machine in the demonstration is separate, built at one-third scale, and it is the one that actually throws. Photographs of the bastion captioned as the firing machine circulate widely; they are the wrong engine. Both sets, and the models at 1:10 and 1:20.

Why no times are printed here

The castle publishes its demonstration programme on an activities page that currently carries 2025 and 2026 dates interleaved, which makes any single clock time copied off it a coin toss. So this site prints none. What is stable across every source is the shape: several slots a day, April to November, about ten minutes each, with the day’s times posted at the entrance when you arrive. Ask at the desk on the way in and plan the hour inside around the next one. The opening bands, and whose they are.

What ten minutes looks like

A counterweight trebuchet is a lever with a heavy box on the short arm and a sling on the long one. Winching the arm down raises the counterweight; the release drops it, the arm swings, and the sling adds the last of the speed before it lets go. At one-third scale the physics is unchanged and the noise is a good deal less alarming than the full-size machines on the bastion would be. The demonstration is the payoff for everything the museum has been explaining indoors. The route that leads to it.

The guided version

“Assaulting the castle” is a one-hour guided visit, run in French and in English, that ends in a trebuchet firing — the version to take if you want the machine explained rather than simply released. Other guided visits run to a published programme at about 45 minutes: a twenty-minute walk of the medieval garden, a “secrets of the collections” visit, and a session with a thirteenth-century knight. A blacksmith works daily in season, and demonstrations run in the rain.

The same walls, from the water

The other way to understand a trebuchet is to see what it was pointed at. From the Dordogne the castle sits directly overhead, and the fifteen-kilometre châteaux route names Castelnaud in its own description alongside La Malartrie and Fayrac, about two and a half hours on the water with the bus transfer included. Both paddling routes.

Paddle under the walls you have just walked

Three hours on the Dordogne from Vitrac, passing directly beneath the castle, with paddles, life jackets, a waterproof container and the shuttle back to base. Starts 09:30 to 14:00, from around twenty-nine euros, free cancellation up to 24 hours before.

Frequently asked questions