Vincennes Castle

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The keep of the castle from the northeast

The Vincennes Castle ( French Château de Vincennes ) in the city ​​of Vincennes on the eastern edge of Paris is one of the most important castles in the history of France , along with the Louvre . Its residential tower ( donjon ) is 50 meters high and is one of the highest in France.

investment

Floor plan of Castle and Fort Neuf (19th century)

The actual castle district is a rectangular complex, which is surrounded by a 1,200 meter long wall with nine originally 40 meter high towers and a 27 meter wide moat . On the western long side, the wall is interrupted by the fortified residential tower. It has a square footprint of 16.20 meters and is six stories high. The thickness of its walls is about 3.30 meters. The actual castle building are the pavilion of the king and the Pavilion of the Queen , which face each other in the southern courtyard and the outer sides of the enclosure are flush. In the middle of the complex is the castle chapel called Sainte-Chapelle , which was built between 1380 and 1552 and is very similar to the church of the same name on the Île de la Cité in Paris.

Extensive renovation work has been carried out by the Ministry of Culture and Defense since 1988 . The palace chapel and the donjon have already been extensively restored. Between 1990 and 2006, the French state spent over 43 million euros on the restoration and the entire interior and exterior work in and around the castle.

history

Manoir du Bois-de-Vincennes

The first real document that mentions the Vilcena forest dates back to 847 and is a deed of the Saint-Maur Abbey ; during this time he belonged to the diocese of Paris . In the 11th century the forest became the property of the Crown and its borders largely corresponded to those of today; at that time it should have been around 1000 hectares in size.

The Vincennes forest was a popular hunting ground for Louis VII (1120–1180). In 1164 he had monks from Grandmont in the Limousin ( Grammontenser from Grandmont near Saint-Sylvestre (Haute-Vienne) ) come and gave them a plot of land surrounded by ditches in the forest for drainage, where the Lac des Minimes is located in the north-east of the forest today. In 1178 he signed a document in Vincennes, which proves that a royal residence, or at least a hunting pavilion, now existed here, the first construction period of which is to be set in the middle of the 12th century.

After monks from the surrounding abbeys had reduced the forest to 50 arpents (approx. 17 hectares) by clearing , Philip II Augustus (1165–1223) and his successors had it reforested from 1183. Philip II had the forest surrounded with thick walls and stocked with game; he and his grandson Louis IX. the saint (1214–1270) finally built a manor with a first chapel on the site of an old hunting lodge, the Manoir du Bois-de-Vincennes, the starting point of the future Vincennes Castle. For the latter, the manoir became his main seat after the Palais de la Cité , and it was also of greater importance for his successors, especially as Philip III. (1245–1285) married here (1274), and Ludwig X. (1289–1316) and Charles IV (1295–1328) spent their last days here. Charles V (1338–1380) was born here, for him the manoir became his residence and the center of his administration.

The few and poorly detailed written sources hardly allow any conclusions to be drawn about the development of the manor between Louis the Saint and the start of construction of the (new) donjon in 1361. Construction work in the Manoir is documented for 1251, more at the time of Philip III. probably when he - 1274-1276 - the forest of Vincennes on the territory of Saint-Mande expanded and made to restore water supplies to the lake of Saint-Mande and the Manoir. Charles IV and Charles V continued the project to restore the forest in its entirety. During the reign of Philip IV (1268-1314, ruled from 1285) more important works between 1296 and 1305 are mentioned. 1336–1338, under Philip VI. (1293–1350) there was further important construction work, after which the sources indicate the construction of new galleries and the addition of cellars, there was work on the queen's kitchen from 1347 to 1349. Finally, from 1365 to 1367 under Charles V, a section of significant reconstruction work is mentioned; with him the important period of the Manoir du Bois-de-Vincennes ended. From this time nothing remains of the manoir above ground. Only excavations, which began in June 1991, brought the walls of this first royal residence to light, the oldest of them from the end of the 12th century.

Following the sources and the excavations of the 1990s, one can now get an exact picture of what the royal manoir of Vincennes looked like at the beginning of Charles V's reign in 1364. The names between 1248 and 1353 also make it clear: domus, maison , later manoir or hôtel ; palais is rare and terms that indicate a fortification, such as castrum / château, are not used for Vincennes. In the middle of the 14th century, the manoir was a square building with a side length of 60 meters, consisting of four wings around a courtyard. All excavated structures are at ground level and not on terraces, contrary to what the fortification architecture of the 12th – 14th centuries suggests. Century is known. A defensive element (the square donjon about 10 meters on a side, which is only known from a drawing from 1654) existed at the corner of the west and south wings. On the floor of the west wing was the large Salle Saint-Louis , which is mentioned in several sources. The rest of the manor contained various rooms, religious rooms - especially the Chapelle Saint-Martin , which was destroyed in the 17th century.

In the center of the courtyard of the Manoir stood a stone monumental fountain from the time of Charles V, perhaps from the reconstruction phase from 1365 to 1367, which replaced a similar older and similar structure.

The last remains of the manor were demolished in the 18th century.

Vincennes Castle

View of one of the so-called pavilions
View of the chapel
Interior of the chapel
Flag collection in Vincennes Castle

The transformation of the Manoir into today's Vincennes Castle began a few years after the Valois dynasty came to power (1328). Philip VI, the successor of Charles V, planned the construction of a donjon in the western part of the property from 1337, the construction of which was driven forward during the Hundred Years War under John II the Good and his eldest son, Charles V , and was only completed in 1373 . In uncertain times, this massive, fortified complex served the king as a residential palace .

In the 17th century added Louis Le Vau , architect of the Sun King, Louis XIV. , Two wings added, the pavilion of the king and the Pavilion of the Queen . The castle thus became the third royal residence. When Vincennes was abandoned by the royal court, it served as a state prison , in which the Marquis de Sade , Count Mirabeau and Diderot , among others , were imprisoned.

In 1739 a porcelain factory was founded in the castle, which moved to Sèvres in 1756 . Under this name are next to the Meissner most precious porcelains of the 18th century known today.

In 1804, Louis Antoine Henri de Condé , Duke of Enghien, on the orders of Napoléon Bonaparte , was executed by firing squad for alleged conspiracy in the moat of the castle after he had previously been kidnapped from his former residence, Ettenheim in Baden , as a sympathizer of the Bourbons . On October 15, 1917, Mata Hari as an alleged German spy was also shot dead in the fortress moat.

The park was designed in the style of English landscape gardens in the 19th century . Napoleon III handed it over to Paris as a public institution in 1860, with an area of ​​almost 10 square kilometers.

In 1940 the castle served as the headquarters of the French General Staff during the unsuccessful defense of the country against the German invasion . It was then occupied by German troops who had to vacate it on August 20, 1944, not without leaving some damage.

Today the castle houses various departments of the Ministry of Defense (military archive and military history research) and the Ministry of Culture and Communication (Center for National Monuments).

The flags of the dissolved French regiments and battalions are kept in Vincennes Castle.

Transport links

The eastern terminus Château de Vincennes of line 1 of the Paris subway is at Vincennes Castle . Not far away is the Vincennes station on line A of the Paris RER suburban train system .

literature

  • Frank Dengler: Karlstein and Vincennes - two late medieval castles as symbols of power in comparison. In: Hartmut Hofrichter (Hrsg.): The castle - a cultural-historical phenomenon. Theiss, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-8062-1134-5 (= publications of the Deutsche Burgenvereinigung eV, series B, publications volume 2 and special issue Burgen und Schlösser ), pp. 75–85.
  • Luce Gaume: Le château de Vincennes. Un histoire militaire . Chaudun, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-35039-059-8 .
  • Ulrike Heinrichs: Vincennes and the courtly culture. Sculpture in Paris 1360–1420 . Reimer, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-496-01154-8 (also dissertation, Freiburg / B. 1997).
  • Martial Pradel de Lamase: Le château de Vincennes . Calmann-Lévy, Paris 1932.

Web links

Commons : Vincennes Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Château de Vincennes at monuments-nationaux.fr, accessed on February 22, 2019

Coordinates: 48 ° 50 ′ 34 ″  N , 2 ° 26 ′ 9 ″  E