Beletage

Historicist Villa Martha in Dresden (neo-renaissance) with a bel étage on the upper floor from the 1870s

Tenement building in Munich with emphasis on the facade on the upper floor (1879)

The Beletage ( French bel étage , the 'beautiful floor') was the preferred floor of a noble or upper-class residential building or the best equipped apartment . The Italian name is piano nobile . Both forms of the term date from the 17th century.

historical development

The Italian piano nobile was the first floor usually being carried out at the count too low and mezzanine floor or mezzanine must take into account. Sometimes a secular building in northern Italy could also have several piani nobili , which differ only slightly from one another, as can be seen, for example, at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence .

Even in medieval town houses , the living spaces were on the upper floor, while utility rooms, warehouses and shops were housed on the ground floor. In the city ​​palace of the nobles, the representation rooms were on the first floor. In the German palace and the Italian city palace, the state rooms were originally on the second floor. Examples of this are the Berlin City Palace , the New Bamberg Residence and the Ellingen Residence . Under the influence of the French castle-building tradition, the state rooms of more recent buildings are also on the first floor.

Wilhelminian style villas , which met the representational demands of the aspiring bourgeoisie, as well as representative urban apartment buildings were also laid out according to this pattern . The first floor in the apartment building was characterized by the fact that it was removed from the cold and damp ground of the first floor and the action on the street, but was easily accessible via an often representative staircase .

That is why the first floor had the highest rooms and was usually best equipped, for example with a balcony or bay window on the facade, inside with stucco decorations on the ceilings and possibly even a separate entrance. In the case of lavish rental buildings, the cost of representation fell from the first floor up from floor to floor. The top floor - if developed - was, like the basement, usually reserved for the domestic staff.

Nowadays, the upper floors in multi-storey inner-city residential buildings are often more sought-after because of their greater quiet, and access to them has been made easier since the introduction of elevators .

Conceptual transfer

The term Beletage is also used metaphorically. In football , Beletage denotes the highest division in a country, for example the Bundesliga in Germany, i.e. the most attractive sporting and financially attractive class.

literature

• Cord Meckseper : The Piano Nobile. An occidental room category . Georg Olms, Hildesheim 2012, ISBN 978-3-487-14742-0 .
• Heiko Laß: Piano nobile . In: Horst Wolfgang Böhme , Reinhard Friedrich, Barbara Schock-Werner (Hrsg.): Dictionary of castles, palaces and fortresses . Philipp Reclam, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-15-010547-1 , pp. 201 , doi : 10.11588 / arthistoricum.535 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Beletage  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• Museum Pankow: Heynstrasse, life in the bel étage around 1900

swell

1. ↑ berliner-mieterverein.de: The Beletage: Beautiful living in the 19th century
2. ^ Cord Meckseper : The Piano Nobile. An occidental room category . Georg Olms, Hildesheim 2012, ISBN 978-3-487-14742-0 .
3. ^ The Berlin tenement house during the imperial era. In: Humboldt University of Berlin. Retrieved February 8, 2018 . 
4. ↑ The House in the History of Europe: A Manual in the Google Book Search