This French castle has sold only once in 500 years – for US$17 million
50,000 square feet, 15 bedrooms, and a thousand years of history
Bertrand Pillivuyt came to occupy the Château de la Barben, a 1,000 year-old castle in Aix en Provence, the old fashioned way: “I inherited it,” he said. “It was passed to my wife and myself in 2006.”
Pillivuyt is the latest in a long and illustrious string of owners to occupy the castle, which is a combination of fortress, renaissance palace, and 19th century mansion. Now, though, he’s put it on the market for 15 million euros (US$17 million) via Sotheby’s International Realty, ceding the castle’s lineage to a future buyer.
The History
The earliest record of the property is from 1064, when it was owned by the monastic order, the Abbey of Saint Victor de Marseille.
According to castle historians, within a century later, it made its way into the hands of a medieval lord, Pierre de Pontevès, and remained in his family until the late 1380s, when—according to Nostradamus—a descendant, Guillaume de Pontevès, participated in an ill-advised revolt against Louis II de Anjou, King of Naples. (The revolt was said to be put down by Louis II’s mother, who pawned her jewelry to raise an army of mercenaries.) It then bounced around the French royal family for a century or so, until 1474, when it ended up in the possession of the noble Forbin family.
Among the largest landholders in southern France, the Forbins managed to retain control of the castle for 500 years. But by the 1960s, the Marquis de Forbin “had a lot of estates around Provence, and he couldn’t maintain them all,” said Pillivuyt. “My father in law, André Pons, was friends with him and agreed to buy the château.”
Pillivuyt said he has no idea how much Pons, whom he described as someone who had “vineyards and lavender fields,” paid for the property, but estimated that it cost from 1 million to 2 million francs. “The château was in very bad shape, and it was a big job to renovate it,” he said.