Château de Pau

The Château de Pau (English: Pau Castle) is a castle in the centre of the city of Pau, the capital of Pyrénées-Atlantiques and Béarn. It dominates that quarter of the city.

Henry IV of France and Navarre was born here on December 13, 1553 and it was once used by Napoleon as a holiday home during his period of power.

The château has been classified as a Monument historique since 1840 by the French Ministry of Culture. Nowadays it contains a collection of tapestries.

Pau Castle was founded in the Middle Ages. Work before any military, is a castle typically built on top of the hill overlooking the Gave bounded by ravine Hédas.

Since its construction, the castle takes on a symbolic importance: providing a stockade (poor, in Bearn) designate, by metonymy, the city itself. These piles, symbolizing loyalty and righteousness, are each asaxis mundiin a version of béarnaise. In the twelfth century Gaston IV of Béarn built three towers at the fortress. They are called Mazères Billère and Montauser.

The fourteenth century will see a figure emblematic of Bearn, who leaves his mark at the Chateau de Pau: Gaston III of Foix-Béarn, better known as the Gaston Phoebus. This warlord, in a difficult position because, by their possessions, under the leadership of the enemy kingdoms of France and England, makes the Beam, "gift of God," a united and autonomous region. Fébus there built the tower of brick, high thirty-three meters, and it burns the inscription: "Febus me" (Phoebus gave me, in Bearn).

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