In France, a fortified castle under construction using medieval techniques

"And here we are, in 1256," proudly declares Florian Renucci, the site's project manager, as he crosses the monumental entrance, flanked by pot-bellied towers with still-unfinished roofs.

On the footbridge overlooking the moat, the heavy footsteps of a draft horse announce the arrival of a timber cart carrying materials to the castle courtyard.

Inside the enclosure surrounded by 3-meter thick walls, there is no steel crane but a "squirrel cage" typical of the Middle Ages, where men turning in wooden wheels lift loads of impressive weight.

Here, it's all about "elbow grease": carpenters square oak trees with axes, without any saws; quarrymen split blocks of stone weighing several tons by hand; mixers mix clay and lime to seal the rubble.

The conformity of the techniques and materials used is certified by a scientific committee. The forty or so "workers," as they were called in the Middle Ages, go so far as to wear period clothing, even though a cell phone can sometimes be slipped into a pocket.

Masons, ironworkers and other craftsmen revive ancestral know-how in front of 300.000 visitors per year.

"Not a penny"

"We were crazy people driven by an idea," Marilyne Martin, co-founder of the project, which began with a discussion between three lovers of old buildings, including the owner of the nearby Château de Saint-Fargeau, which was then being renovated, recalled to AFP.

But the fine team wanted to go further and build a 31th century castle "from scratch", with its six towers, the main one of which will culminate at XNUMX meters, its chapel, its stately home...

"We didn't have a penny," recalls Ms. Martin. The site was chosen as a modest, forgotten one-hectare quarry in the heart of the Guédelon forest (hence the name). It was purchased for 6.500 francs (1.474 euros today) and, six months later, in 1997, construction began.

"Why build a fortified castle when there are so many ruined castles in France?" she admits. "The idea was to build in order to understand, to put yourself in the role of a builder in the Middle Ages, from the first stone to the last tile."

"Preserving this intangible heritage for the next few hundred years is important," says Florian Hémery, the historical advisor on the site: "if a building to be renovated is made from air lime, it must be rebuilt with air lime, but only if we still know how to make it."

A necessity that found its full meaning during the restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris, where many craftsmen trained at Guédelon, who call them "passers of knowledge", went to lay their stone.

"Short circuit"

Resurrecting the past, the construction site also has an air of returning to the future as it becomes the very example of sustainable construction, so much so that the construction group Bouygues came to Guédelon in 2022 to study energy-saving techniques in a context of climate change.

"Under the pretext of building a fortified castle, we realized that we were being very modern: we are in the field of ecological housing," explains Marilyne Martin.

"Guédelon is a reflection on how to build more soberly," adds Florian Renucci. "Today we're talking about short supply chains: Guédelon is perhaps the only construction site in the world where the material supply chains are the shortest: the quarry is at the very foot of the château, the oak forest is directly in the environment, the lime is fired on site with much less energy" (at 900°C and not at 1.450°C like cement)...

"By rediscovering how with simple means, our hands, our elbow grease, we can build monumental architecture, we can absolutely use it for residential houses," he says.

Provided you take your time, because the Guédelon construction site will not be finished for years, even decades.