Tradition holds that Pierre de Tarentaise, the future pope Innocent V, was born in this castle in 1224, into the noble Les Cours family. Some scholars, among them Aimé-Pierre Frutaz, do not confirm it: it is one of those claims the village has kept and the historians have left open.
What to see
The castle stands in the hamlet of Écours and turns up under several names, tower of Lescours or Château des Cours, according to the French spellings. It was built at the end of the twelfth century by the Lescours family, an aristocracy of notarial origin: de Curiis in the Latin documents.
Visiting
The property changed hands repeatedly. By 1430 the Lescours had enfeoffed part of their holdings, castle included, to the Châtelard; in 1551 it was sold outright to the Bozel family, and in the same century it became a co-lordship of the Gal and Malliet families. In the seventeenth century the whole estate passed to the Passerin, who held it until 1730.
Our editors' tip
Worth the stop if you are already at La Salle for the Châtelard: the two castles face each other a few hundred metres apart and tell two different ways of living in the valley, the bishop's crag and the notaries' house.