The Templars’ prison, and a caretaker who swore he found their treasure
A Norman fortress on a mound about 30 metres high, its octagonal keep one of the best preserved shell keeps there is, built to hold the Vexin against the kings of France. From 1158 to 1160 the Knights Templar kept it while two child royals waited to be married. After the order fell the castle became its prison, and from 1310 to 1314 the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was held here with three other leaders of the order. Legend says the Templar treasure never left. In the 1950s the castle’s caretaker and gardener, Roger Lhomoy, dug a shaft into the mound and claimed he had broken into an underground chapel holding 19 stone sarcophagi and 30 medieval chests. The tunnel was so deep and dangerous that nobody would go down to look. He was ordered to fill it in, Gérard de Sède made the tale the heart of a 1962 book that helped launch the Priory of Sion myth, and an official dig in 1964 found nothing, except that all the digging had cracked the keep.
Gisors, Eure, Normandy, France
See it on the map
Other places on the map within a couple of hours of here.
