Château de Puymartin

The Château de Puymartin stands on a wooded hilltop in the Périgord Noir, about eight kilometres from Sarlat, its grey stone towers rising above the oaks. Building began in the 13th century; during the Hundred Years’ War it fell into English hands in 1357 and was bought back and abandoned by the consuls of Sarlat. Around 1450 Radulphe de Saint-Clar rebuilt it, and in the 16th century, under his grandson Raymond de Saint-Clar, it served as a Catholic headquarters in the Wars of Religion. Remarkably, it has passed down within the same extended family for some six centuries; the Montbron family, descendants by marriage, opened it to visitors in 1972.

The castle’s ghost belongs to the Saint-Clar era. According to the legend, Thérèse de Saint-Clar, wife of a lord of Puymartin, was found with a lover when her husband returned unexpectedly from the wars. He killed the lover and shut Thérèse in a small room at the top of the north tower, where she spent the last fifteen or sixteen years of her life, receiving her food through a hatch. When she died, the story goes, her husband had her body walled up in the room.

No document confirms Thérèse’s imprisonment or the walled-up body, and the tale follows the common European pattern of the punished wife and the White Lady. But at Puymartin it is told by the owners themselves. The family’s own account says the late Count Henri de Montbron saw her several times in different rooms, and his son Xavier insists she is “not just a legend”. Guests staying in the château have described a white silhouette in the night.

Today the White Lady is part of the visit. Guides lead tourists up to the bare tower room, and the château runs summer evening shows called “the Ball of the White Ladies”, a Halloween escape game and visits from YouTubers hoping to film her. Beyond the legend, Puymartin is notable for its rare 17th-century studiolo, a small study painted in grisaille with mythological scenes, and for having served as a location for Ridley Scott’s first film, The Duellists (1977).

A white female figure seen on the main staircase, on the castle’s wall-walk and in the north tower room, usually around midnight; owners and guests describe her as calm and harmless, and some report a white shape near the ceiling at night.

The small room at the top of the north tower where Thérèse is said to have been confined, the spiral staircase leading to it and the wall-walk (chemin de ronde).

The White Lady of Puymartin features in French TV reports, YouTube ghost-hunting videos and regional legend collections, and inspires the château’s summer “Bal des Dames Blanches” evenings and Halloween escape game.