The fortified castle deeply pervades the imaginary world in the childhood of our contemporaries. The phenomenon is massive and already ancient, as the 418 pictures of the fortified castles proposed from 1882 to 1960 in youth publications dedicated to school or family use and which are the basis of this study can testify. Insofar as the editorial activity reflects social choices, it therefore deals with understanding how the knowledge and the myth of the fortified castle is building itself during childhood through its various iconic representations, textual or thanks to the toy-castle.Starting from the exploitation of this vast corpus, this thesis underlines the founding principles of the knowledge of the fortified castle which predominate in all supports, for education or for leisure : the scientific references to Viollet le Duc’s works, omnipresent until 1960. This will to be based on recognized scientific values feeds the goals of the society of the late 19th and 20th century, which, through this determined choice, wishes to give the best for the education of their youth.Moreover, the study of the pictures interacting with written expressions shows that the preconceived ideas, such as boiling oil or the dungeon, are part of acquired knowledge as much as of the micro-myth. These stereotypes stimulating the imaginary world of all generations, the following study gives an analysis of the emotions that emerge in the reception activity of the representations but also of the ones that the child translates in the symbolical game. Step by step, the original fears aroused by the fortified castle in the games of the reading or playing child are highlighted : fear of freedom or light deprivation, fear of imprisonment, in other words the fear of death, this unknown. Here we are in accordance with the founding myth of humanity.Thanks to the analysis of the school books and youth publications, it appears that the fortified castle is also a political construction used for moral and religious education, even the one that distinguishes boys from girls. But this is the resorting to neurosciences that enable to understand the neuronal process at stake as far as the fortified castle is concerned, in the young reader’s or player’s perceptive and sensitive activity, but also in his motor activity which implies his body awareness.With this purpose, what is really at stake in the restoration of the fortified castle or even in the identical building of the 13th century castle, Guédelon : preservation of the past, or a concrete immersion in the imaginary world of the fortified castle on a real scale ?