5d • Culture and History
A 640-Year-Old Castle Found Beneath a Private Mansion. What Does That Tell Us About Europe?
A 640-Year-Old Castle Found Beneath a Private Mansion. What Does That Tell Us About Europe?
During excavation work in Vannes, in Brittany, archaeologists uncovered the remains of the 14th-century Château de l’Hermine beneath a private mansion.
This was not a loose foundation stone or a decorative arch. It was a substantial medieval structure, once associated with the Dukes of Brittany, now sitting buried beneath later layers of private wealth.
Pause on that for a moment.
A seat of feudal authority.Buried beneath a modern residence.Not destroyed. Not erased. Simply layered over.
Europe does not tend to erase its past. It accumulates it.
The Château de l’Hermine was originally constructed in the late fourteenth century as a ducal fortress and residence. Over time, political systems changed, regimes shifted, and architectural tastes evolved. But the land remained. Power changed form, not location.
This discovery raises several important questions.
First, continuity of land control. How often has land remained in elite hands across centuries, simply adapting to new political systems? When we talk about revolutions and reforms, how much truly changes at ground level?
Second, ownership of buried history.When medieval architecture is discovered beneath private property, who owns it?The landowner?The state?The public as collective inheritors of cultural memory?
European heritage law often protects archaeological remains, but enforcement, preservation, and public access vary widely.
Third, urban stratigraphy as memory.Cities such as Rome, Paris, London, and Istanbul are layered vertically. Every regime builds over the last. Yet we rarely think about the psychological effect of living above buried authority structures.
Are we walking across forgotten centres of power every day?
Finally, archaeology as interruption.Modern development assumes forward momentum. Archaeology interrupts that narrative. Every excavation reminds us that progress sits on foundations we did not build and rarely fully understand.
The castle beneath the mansion is not just a curiosity. It is a physical reminder that civilisations rarely vanish. They are absorbed.
Are we the top layer of history, or simply the next one waiting to be buried?
I would be particularly interested in hearing from anyone with an archaeology, heritage, or legal background on how discoveries like this should be handled.
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A 640-Year-Old Castle Found Beneath a Private Mansion. What Does That Tell Us About Europe?
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