Châteauneuf-en-Auxois Castle

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Eastern view of Châteauneuf Castle

The castle Châteauneuf-en-Auxois ( French Château de Châteaufneuf-en-Auxois ), also just called Châteauneuf Castle , is a spur castle in the town of the same name in the French department of Côte-d'Or . The facility stands on the plateau of a 475 meter high rock around one kilometer east of the Canal de Bourgogne and towers over the Auxois landscape . It is considered to be one of the best examples of Burgundian military architecture of the late Middle Ages and served to secure the surrounding plain and the road from Dijon to Autun .

The castle, which was built around 1175, was repeatedly changed and expanded in the course of the 13th to 15th centuries until it finally had its present form in the 18th century. Some of their owners came from the most powerful families in France, e. B. the noble families Pot , Montmorency or Vienne . Since the beginning of 2008, the castle is owned by the Regional Council of Burgundy ( French Conseil régional de Bourgogne ) and is since 10 December 1894 as a monument historique under monument protection . It can be viewed for a fee every day except Monday.

history

At the instigation of Jean de Chaudenay , of whose own castle , located a little further south, only ruins still exist, part of his seigneury was cut off in the second half of the 12th century . This part was named Châteauneuf and given to his younger son Jean. Before that, however, his father had built a first, simple castle for him at the current location, which was called castrum novum . It was an almost square residential tower made of stone, which his son moved into around 1175. From then on he called himself Jean de Châteaufneuf. Pierre I. de Châteauneuf expanded the existing building in the first half of the 14th century to include a curtain wall and a neck ditch to protect against English troops who marched through Burgundy in the course of the Hundred Years War . The small complex thus took up the northern part of the castle, which extends to today's gate . His grandson Simon de Châteauneuf and his son Poinçot enlarged the courtyard to the south-east by an approximately square area and surrounded the entire castle complex with a new curtain wall. Around 1420, Guy (ot) de Châteauneuf had a small logis in the late Gothic style added to the south of the residential tower . His daughter Catherine was the last of her family to live in the castle complex. She died at the stake in 1465 for poisoning her second husband, Jacques d'Aussonville.

Philippe Pot (here a picture from the Book of Arms of the Order of the Golden Fleece ) had Châteauneuf Castle significantly expanded.

Duke Philip the Good moved their property and in April 1457 gave it to his Chancellor and later Grand Seneschal of Burgundy Philippe Pot , lord of La Rochepot Castle . He carried out various redesigns and expansions of the castle complex. He reinforced the curtain wall with towers, all of which are accessed by slender stair towers . Two of them guard the portal in the northeast that he created. At the same time, Pot had a splendid new lodge, now known as the large lodge ( French Grand lodge ), added to the old one of the Châteauneufs and built a castle chapel . The latter was inaugurated in 1481. The construction of another building, leaning against the eastern curtain wall in the southern area, completed the complex. The gate in the southeast , which can only be reached via a drawbridge, presumably came from him . After Philippe Pot's death in 1493, his brother Guyot inherited the castle. His son Regnier died childless, so that the property passed to his sister Anne Pot. She was married to Guillaume, baron de Montmorency , since 1484 and brought the complex to this influential family. The widow of her son Anne , the Connétable of France , gave the castle to her third son, Charles . His military career in the service of France meant that he hardly stayed at his castle and therefore had it managed by a loyal man named La Villeneuve. He was able to successfully defend it against a siege by Jacques Chabot, Marquis de Mirebeau , during the Huguenot Wars in 1590 . Charles de Montmorency left the property to his niece Madeleine, the only daughter of Charles' brother Guillaume de Montmorency, seigneur de Thoré, when he died in 1612 . From their marriage to Henri de Luxembourg, Duke of Piney and Prince of Tingry, came the two daughters Marguerite-Charlotte and Marie-Liesse, who sold the complex in 1627 for 66,000  livres to Charles de Vienne, Count of Commarin.

The new owner had various rooms of the Grand Logis redesigned according to contemporary tastes and had its courtyard facade changed. This included, for example, installing new windows and converting the small portal to its present form. The de Vienne family owned the property until 1767, but for a long time it was not regularly inhabited and gradually fell into disrepair. Due to financial problems, Louis-Henri de Vienne sold Châteauneuf Castle for 340,000 livres to the Parisian banker Jean Pâris de Montmartel . But already in 1783 the property changed hands again, because the heirs of Jean Pâris 'son Armand Pâris, who died childless, had to sell it for 370,000 livres to Jacques François de Damas , Marquis of Antigny, in order to be able to pay Armand Pâris' debts. Adélaide Louise Zéphirine, the heir to Jacques François' son Charles, brought the castle to his family through her marriage to Charles-François de Vogüé in 1802 .

The buildings were first restored in the 19th century . The was paneling of the chapel in the castle Commarin transferred, which belonged also the Vogüé family. In addition, some late Gothic chimneys were installed in the Grand Logis . They originally came from the castle of Courcelles-lès-Semur . A second restoration under Charles Suisse followed in 1902. Charles de Vogüé donated the property to the state in 1936. During the Second World War, he had the most important 912 exhibits from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon as well as the most valuable holdings from the Dijon library and the departmental archive kept in order to protect them from the effects of the war. The Burgundy Regional Council has owned the castle since January 1st, 2008. Since then he has had further restorations and repairs carried out.

description

Floor plan of the castle

Châteauneuf-en-Auxois Castle is one of the few Burgundian complexes that has been able to retain its medieval roots. This authenticity is very rare, because most of the castles in Burgundy were fundamentally changed or even completely abandoned during the Renaissance . The system measures around 70 meters in length and is up to 35 meters wide. The ensemble consists of a residential tower from around 1175, two logis, a castle chapel and a gate , which are surrounded by a curtain wall reinforced with towers. Hewn limestone and quarry stone were used as building material . The complex is separated from the village in the north and east by a ditch carved into the rock. This could once be crossed by means of two drawbridges that led to the fortified entrances of the castle complex. Only one of the two bridges was still functional. The entrance in the northeast can be reached via it. It is flanked by two massive, four-story towers with loopholes and a horseshoe-shaped floor plan. Your basement has a dome vault . Above the arch are the remains of Philippe Pot's stone coat of arms, which - like all other coats of arms on the castle - was violently destroyed during the French Revolution . Of the second castle entrance in the south, only the walled-up portal opening and the pillars of the drawbridge are preserved. On the eastern outside there are still the Maschikulis from the second half of the 15th century, which were accessible from the former battlement .

In the southeastern part of the courtyard are the ruins of the so-called Logis Philippe Pot ( French Logis de Philippe Pot ), also known as Logis d'hôtes . This building was probably destroyed in the turmoil of the French Revolution. Its façade with a Gothic keel arch above the door shows similarities to that of the Ducal Palace of Dijon . A special architectural feature is its internal stair tower. The two-storey building was given a new roof in 1983 to protect the existing structure. The monumental chimneys inside indicate that this building used to house the castle kitchens.

The oldest part of the castle complex is in its northern tip. It is the four-story residential tower that is covered by a hipped roof. In the past, only the top floor had windows, the other floors were only illuminated through narrow slits of light. The current windows were only broken out in the Baroque period . On the other hand, the still preserved high entrance on the first floor, which can be reached via an external staircase, is original .

The main residential wing was the large logis in the style of the flamboyant , which leans against the curtain wall in the west. It consists of an older part and a newer part added to it in the 15th century. The interface between the two buildings is covered by an octagonal stair tower, the representative portal of which is adorned with a keel arch. For this reason, the tower does not stand in the middle in front of the facade, as was otherwise the case when it was built. The profiled cross-frame windows on the upper floor date from the 17th century. The guard room ( French Salle des gardes ), also known as the Great Hall ( French Grande salle ), is located on the ground floor of the Great Logis . The room with a beamed ceiling has a large fireplace from the 15th century, which used to bear Philippe Pot's coat of arms. The motto of the Seneschal Tant L Vault is preserved on it . On the upper floor of the Logis there are mainly living rooms with furniture from the Gothic, Renaissance and 18th century. A special piece of equipment is the seven-part series of Flemish tapestries , which show stations in the life of Moses .

A Gothic chapel adjoins the Great Logis to the south . It is dedicated to Mary and St. John. Its walls are painted with tempera in the colors of the Pot family: black and red. In between there are frescoes on light strips depicting Jesus Christ and the twelve apostles . They are attributed to Pierre Coustain . A replica of Philippe Pot's tomb , whose original from the 15th century is on display in the Louvre , has been installed in the chapel since the 1990s .

  • The large logis with stair tower and old logis

  • The Logis Philippe Pots

  • The guard room in the large logis

  • Castle chapel with a replica of Philippe Pot's tomb

literature

  • Claude Frégnac (Ed.): Merveilles des châteaux de Bourgogne et Franche-Comté. Hachette, Paris 1969, pp. 98-101.
  • Bernhard Laule, Ulrike Laule, Heinfried Wischermann: Art monuments in Burgundy. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1991, ISBN 3-534-08440-3 , pp. 378-379.
  • Pierre Quarré: Châteauneuf. In: Françoise Vignier (ed.): Le Guide des Châteaux de France. Cote d'Or. Hermé, Paris 1985, ISBN 2-86665-015-8 , pp. 51-53.
  • Rolf Toman (Ed.): Burgundy. Art, landscape, architecture. Ullmann, [Königswinter] 2009, ISBN 978-3-8331-4436-3 , pp. 170-171.
  • Giovanni Vedrès: Castles in Burgundy. Éditions du Chêne, Paris 1943, pp. 48–50.
  • Françoise Vignier: Aimer les châteaux de Bourgogne. Ouest-France, Rennes 1986, ISBN 2-85882-949-7 , p. 16.
  • Françoise Vignier: Le château de Châteauneuf-en-Auxois. Éditions du Patrimoine, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-85822-786-1 .

Web links

Commons : Châteauneuf-en-Auxois Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Le Cercle du Patrimoine (ed.): Le guide des châteaux de France. Le Cercle du Patrimoine, Paris 2007, ISBN 978-2-9700551-0-5 , p. 225.
  2. ↑ Pascale Lefort-Jacquemin (Ed.): Le Petit Futé Côte d'Or. Nouvelles Editions de l'Université, Paris 2010, ISBN 978-2-746928817 , p. 119 ( digitized ).
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Entry on the castle in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French), accessed on January 6, 2020.
  4. ^ Rolf Toman: Burgundy. Art, landscape, architecture. 2009, p. 170.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i History of the Castle , accessed on January 6, 2020.
  6. ↑ Information about the castle on the Amis de Châteauneuf website , accessed on January 6, 2020.
  7. ^ A b c Claude Frégnac: Merveilles des châteaux de Bourgogne et Franche-Comté. 1969, p. 100.
  8. ^ A b Rolf Toman: Burgundy. Art, landscape, architecture. 2009, p. 171.
  9. ↑ Sophie Jugie, Emmanuel Starcky: L'art des collections, you bicentenaire musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon. Musée des beaux-arts de Dijon, Dijon 2000, p. 333.
  10. ^ Thorsten Droste : Burgundy. Monasteries, castles, historic cities and the culture of viticulture in the heart of France. DuMont, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3770141660 , p. 25 ( digitized version ).
  11. ↑ Information according to the cadastral map available online
  12. ^ Bernhard Laule, Ulrike Laule, Heinrich Wischermann: Art monuments in Burgundy. 1991, p. 379.
  13. ^ Françoise Vignier: Aimer les châteaux de Bourgogne. 1986, p. 16.
  14. ^ Pierre Quarré: Châteauneuf. 1985, p. 52.

Coordinates: 47 ° 13 ′ 2.7 ″  N , 4 ° 38 ′ 24 ″  E