# Château de Brézé

By [EvgenyNug Diary](https://paragraph.com/@evgenynug-diary) · 2024-07-28

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The third castle on our April trip is the Castle of Bresee. At first glance it looks small and quite ordinary. But when you get closer, you feel the power of the opening walls and the uniqueness of the construction. The castle is surrounded not just by a moat, but has two full floors down from the ground level and a whole system of underground catacombs. It is the deepest (reaching 18 meters) moat in Europe! And the nature of this underground part of the castle goes back to ancient times, when there were underground labyrinths-dwellings of ancient Trogladites.

On their place in the rock “Roche de Breze” in 1063 appeared underground fortress, where the surrounding residents sought refuge from Viking raids, epidemics and bad weather. The caves got a new life in the 15th-16th centuries, when the moat was widened, deepened and the underground space was again used for protection and storage. The total area of underground constructions of the castle is estimated at 28000 square meters!

Later, the underground structures were used for winemaking. The region itself has been famous for its white wine since the Middle Ages. The exceptional soil around the castle, consisting of loamy sand, clay and tuff, has always given the local wines a unique individuality and mineral content.

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*Originally published on [EvgenyNug Diary](https://paragraph.com/@evgenynug-diary/ch-teau-de-br-z)*