Chateau de la Brède seems to step from the pages of a fairy tale. Its most famous former owner was the 18th century French philosopher and writer Charles-Louis de Secondat, known as Montesquieu.Montesquieu, a great political thinker in the Age of Enlightenment, was born and raised at La Brède until he was sent to Paris at the age of 11 to study. Upon his father’s death, he inherited a vast fortune and the barony of La Brède.Of course, the estate already had a long history before Montesquieu. It was first mentioned in 1079 when the lord of La Brède fought a duel with a man named Hernandes who was the champion of the army of Navarre. At the time, the building would have been a fortified wooden structure built on an artificial mound of earth, in the center of a dugout moat.
Two centuries later, the wooden structure burned down, and in 1306 construction began on a much sturdier, stone Gothic-style castle.
