Château de Tourves

If the territory of Tourves is named for the first time in the cartulary of the abbey Saint-Victor in 984, a castle is mentioned from 1037 in this same cartulary. This vast space gradually fragmented into three independent castra (Tourves, Seisson and Gaylet), which were well documented in the 13th century. It was the one in Tourves that gave birth to the current village, while the other two sites (Seisson and Gaylet) were declared uninhabited. At the head of the seigneury, we find successively Raymond des Baux, the d'Arcussia, the Ventimiglia and finally the Valbelle. If the lords succeeded one another in Tourves, modelling and redesigning the seigniorial residence, it is to the last of them, Omer de Valbelle (1729-1778), that we must attribute the great interest that the ruins of the castle represent.