The Medieval Warfare museum

The castle itself houses the Medieval Warfare museum. The museum’s collection includes more than 250 weapons and pieces of old armour. Swords, crossbows, staff weapons, chain mail and a ribaudequin are exhibited in the seigneurial lodgings of the fortress.

Furnishings from the 14th and 15th centuries complete the collections.

Discover the collection through a selection of some of the museum’s pieces

Armour

Individual weapons

Powder artillery

Siege engines

Castelnaud Castle presents exceptional, life-size reconstitutions of siege engines from the Middle Ages. All the artillery, whether traction powered or with counterweights, was made out of wood and few have survived to the present day. The only printed sources that allow for their reconstitution are account books, miniatures, collections of drawings and treatises by military engineers from the 13th and 14th centuries such as Villard de Honnecourt and Konrad Kyeser. Medieval iconography was meticulously studied to allow for the recreation of full-size machines.