take the time to wander, talk with the artisans, watch them at work, soak in the atmosphere…
Recommended length of visit: minimum of 4 hours
Our construction site is open every day in July and August. Please check our opening dates before your visit. You are not required to book in advance for family visits.
Guide booklet in hand, enjoy the sights of the medieval construction site at your own pace. Watch the castle-builders at work: the quarrymen, stonemasons, woodcutters, carpenters, tilers, blacksmiths, rope maker and carters.
Take the time to talk to the craftsmen and women: they will explain their work, the tools they use and the role they play in the castle-construction. Visit the chambers which are already in place in the castle: the kitchen, the storeroom, the bedchamber, the Great Hall… and, of course, watch the season’s progress on the construction site.
Leave time to make your way to visit the miller. Wend your way along a 500-m-long woodland path which leads from the construction site to the working watermill.
a genuine encounter with expert craftsmen and craftswomen
Set in over 7 hectares of woodland, the world of Guédelon is made up of three large areas:
- the castle and construction crafts
- the village with the tile makers’ workshop, the dyers’ and painters’ shop, stables and animals
- the forest and mill
Explore the eleven different trades on the construction site, the castle and the hydraulic water mill.
Watch the artisans at work; take time to talk with them and learn about their work.
Guédeon is a working construction site and demonstrations do not take place at set times. The team works according to the real demands on the construction site; if craftsmen is not in their workshop when you first pass, come back a little later, they may have been momentarily called to another part of the site.
A visit to Guédelon is different from season-to-season. Activity on site is never exactly the same from one day to the next. When visitors declare that they will return when the castle is finished, we tell them “that will be too late”! Guédelon is always changing, always evolving.