Château de Rouffillac was built as a manor for the Lords of Rouffillac in the 11th and 12th centuries, on a rise above the Dordogne valley. During the Hundred Years War the river below marked the line between the French and English armies, and the château served as a lookout. A 19th-century restoration by a Parisian ophthalmologist reworked it in the Renaissance style. In 1958 it was bought by the zoologist Pierre Paul Grassé, President of the Academy of Science at the Sorbonne, and it later passed to an English-American family who restored it in full, adding en-suite bathrooms while keeping its original stonework, beams, and fireplaces.