The property survives as one preserved architectural composition, its silhouette dominating the Forez landscape. Four levels rise on a pentagonal plan of irregular sides. Cylindrical towers flank every corner but the south-eastern, which meets the quadrangular keep, and the five wings enclose an inner courtyard.
Gabled roofs of barrel tiles cover the main house, conical ones the round towers. Beneath them, facades of granite rubble stone under pale render set mullioned windows alongside later openings and surviving elements of fortification. A parapet walk carried on corbelled machicolations runs along part of the wall tops, while a Renaissance doorway records the alterations made when the stronghold became a seigneurial house. The stone holds several centuries of history and successive adaptation, and the nobility of its original character survives them all.

The château

Entry to the main house is on the eastern side, across a fixed bridge that reaches a broad terrace paved with wide granite flagstones and carried on a high wall with powerful buttresses. The terrace gives onto a workshop at its eastern end and onto a tower. Stone steps lead up to a rusticated Renaissance doorway, and above it the Marcilly-Talaru family's coat of arms survives in fragments, chiselled away at the Revolution. Beyond the doorway, a vestibule opens into the courtyard.

The first level
Below courtyard level, a door opens onto the landing serving the kitchen, study and drawing room, where straight-laid parquet sits beneath a French-style beamed ceiling. The 13th-century kitchen survives at its original proportions, and the design of its stone fireplace continues into the profile of the neighbouring door, evidence of the care given to decorative unity. Beyond lies the vaulted drawing room, more intimate in character. The south-west tower holds storage; further on, a door leads through to the Renaissance kitchen and to the room within the north-east tower. The stair tower serves every level.
The second level
The salle de justice (the hall where the lord's court sat) takes up much of this level, a vast reception room listed in the catalogue of historic monuments in 1949. Original straight-laid floorboards run beneath a French-style beamed ceiling, and the room keeps its monumental late-Gothic fireplace with stone mantel under a cornice of stepped horizontal mouldings. Beyond, the chapel holds wall paintings of several periods under a medieval rib vault with an armorial boss, all protected as historic monuments. They depict the life of Saint Anthony, Saint Christopher, angel musicians and a church. A fireplace and a 13th-century alabaster holy water stoup occupy one corner. Théodore-Gérard Hanssen, who glazed the Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre and the church at Chalmazel, contributed 20th-century windows showing the cardinal virtues. Alongside, the sisters of Saint Joseph added a sacristy.
A door opens into a bedroom painted with key motifs. Through a Renaissance door, a landing serves two south-facing bedrooms floored with straight-laid parquet under French-style beamed ceilings, then two further rooms facing east, one of them within a tower. Painted columns with Corinthian or diamond-point capitals run across the walls, together with the Talaru and Marcilly coats of arms. Each bedroom has its own bathroom.
The third level
Two bedrooms en enfilade, a bathroom with lavatory and a room given over to a museum precede the Renaissance gallery, which leads to three more bedrooms. One of these carries 20th-century ceramic decoration copied from the château de la Bâtie d'Urfé, and has its own bathroom and lavatory. A further bedroom, a landing and a last bedroom within a tower complete the level.
On the western side, a baluster staircase leads up to the unconverted part of this level: two large rooms, a corridor and two towers, directly above the salle de justice.