Château de Ligueux

The site known as Château de Ligueux is closely linked to the former Benedictine Abbey of Notre-Dame de Ligueux, located in the present-day commune of Sorges et Ligueux en Périgord (formerly Ligueux), in the Dordogne department of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region in southwestern France, in the Périgord.

According to tradition the abbey was originally founded by Charlemagne, who is said to have given it a relic of the arm of Saint Simeon. That early establishment was destroyed by Norman invaders in the mid-9th century. In the early 12th century Géraud de Salles restored the site as a hermitage around which a community of women gathered. Around 1115 a Benedictine nunnery was formally founded, with Maximira as its first abbess; it was initially a mixed monastery. Local lords granted it protection and donations, confirmed in 1188 by Pope Clement III, who also placed the abbey under direct papal authority.

The abbey suffered attacks and looting at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, leaving it almost without community. It was revived with the support of Pope Eugene IV and King Charles VII, but was again severely damaged during the Wars of Religion in the 1570s and 1580s; the nuns took refuge at the Priory of Allois. Recovery began in 1617 and the abbey remained active until the French Revolution, when it was suppressed and dissolved.

Most of the monastic complex has disappeared. The principal surviving elements are the Romanesque abbey church (considerably altered, featuring a chapel with four domes, an apse, two apsidioles, a rare wooden gallery, and carved corbels with human figures), the 17th-century prior’s lodge (logis du prieur), which was transformed into a château-like residence, together with a medieval well, a dovecote and later greenhouses.

The remains of the abbey were inscribed as a Monument historique by decree of 23 May 1951. The site is private property and is partially visitable.