In 927, Leotbald de Brancion donated the village of Blanot to the Abbey of Cluny. The “priory” buildings you see today date from the 12th to 16th century and were used by the secular administrators of the Cluny domain – probably the provost. One of those administrators was Duran de Blanot, father of Jean de Blanot, an important lawyer of the 13th century.

The building was fortified from the 13th-16th centuries in response to three hundred years of wars in this region – The Hundred Years War (1337-1439), the Franco-Burgundian War (1471-1475), and the Wars of Religion (1562-1594).

Glimpses of this long and varied history can be found everywhere: fragments of 13th-14th century Gothic paintings are still visible in one room; graffiti in the attic documents the terrible winter of 1572, when the Saone froze; and burnt beams in the two great rooms show the scars of arson in 1594, by a group of Calvinists.