Built in the 1220s by Enguerrand III, Lord of Coucy, the castle rapidly became an architectural landmark for the size of its towers, far larger than anything that was being built at the time. 

The drawings shown here, most of them drawn during the renovation of the castle that Eugène Viollet-le-Duc directed in the 19th century, show an architecture of grand, carefully detailed rooms in contraposition with the narrow spaces projected to defend and protect the castle from external attack. 

The castle was occupied by the German army during World War I and destroyed in 1917.