Château de Pontevès
| Château de Pontevès | ||
|---|---|---|
 Castle ruins Pontevès (autumn 2015) |
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| Creation time : | around 1000 | |
| Castle type : | Hilltop castle | |
| Conservation status: | ruin | |
| Place: | Pontevès | |
| Geographical location | 43 ° 33 '15 " N , 6 ° 1' 52" E | |
| Height: | 390 m | |
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Château de Pontevès is the ruin of a hilltop castle in the municipality of Pontevès in the Provencal department of Var . It is located on a hill about 390 meters high on the eastern edge of the village with a clear view to the north and east.
Barral de Pontevès (1229–1275) , who resided here around 1260 with his wife Isabelle de Baux, daughter of Amiel de Baux of the noble family Les Baux , is named today as the builder and first ruler . The two neighboring communities Cotignac and Barjols , which are now much more important than Pontevès, were ruled by Château Pontevès at that time. While this building only exerted influence over a relatively short period of perhaps three hundred years because other government buildings were preferred, the family name had a much longer impact on the politics of this region, which in the early family history belonged to the Holy Roman Empire . The Pontevès family belonged to the French nobility . The castle is different from the Château des Pontevès in Hyères .
history
Although the castle was first mentioned in 1021, the current building stock is dated to the 13th century. Among the possessions of the family Pontevès belonged to the marriage of Douceline de Fouque with Isnard d'Agoult that the branch line Pontevès-Bargème a further total of 20 justified, the land area between Barjols and Brignoles up to about 25 kilometers northeast commune in Bargème . The French writer Borel d'Hauterive , who died in 1859, even suspected that Viscount Guillaume I de Marseille , who drove the Saracens out of Provence in 992 , was a progenitor of the family.
The noble Pontevès family gained fame in the early 13th century when they married into the Famille d'Agoult . Their first child, Foulques de Pontevès , was born in 1215. Over the generations, many notable rulers followed who were able to cement the power of the family.
During the Huguenot Wars , Jean-Baptiste de Pontevès (1505–1579) ruled from the Bargème castle , which is described as tyrannical. In 1578 Jean-Baptiste was charged with robbery and pillage of the village of Callas . He and his son Balthasar threatened to destroy the village if the villagers did not take back the lawsuit. The villagers managed to kill him in an ambush. In 1595 Antoine de Pontevès returned to the castle as a descendant of Jean-Baptist, but was murdered by the still angry population during the mass in front of the high altar. The manor house in Bargème had lost its purpose and has since fallen into disrepair.
The main tribe of the Pontevès family ruled from their family seat for many generations during this period.
After the château was sold in 2007 to a Dutch real estate company for 46,000 euros, it was up for sale again in 2010 and was sold to Force 8 SCI for 92,000 euros . The right of first refusal presented by the municipality was challenged by the buyer and was unsuccessful in court in December 2010 and in front of the appellate court in Marseille in April 2011.
Location and building description
The fortress of Pontevès was abandoned before 1471 and never used again for residential purposes, but remained significant until the end of the Ancien Régime : its rather extensive territory (it comprised the western half of Gros Bessillon ) with the field name Rognette (wide plain to the east) formed a separate fiefdom from Sabran-Baudinard . At the beginning of the 20th century, the surrounding wall of the castrum was still almost at its original height.
The hill with a flattened trunk, perhaps a moth , an area of 3000 m 2 and a height of 393 m has no independence as a mountain , but is the north-western foothill (called Vallon de la Colle ) of the Little Bessillon . Ruins of the castle can still be seen on the summit: the diamond-shaped outer walls have been partially preserved or replaced, at the four corners the round, distinctive towers protrude clearly above the surrounding walls. Access is from the south through a brick-built triumphal arch in the otherwise unadorned broken limestone wall.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Louis Barthélemy (editor): Inventaire chronologique des chartes de la famille de Baux ("Baux Chartes") , 1882, page 88
- ↑ Le passé historique de BARGEME est étroitement lié à la dynastie des Ponteves . Bargème municipality (French)
- ↑ a b Borel d'Hauterive : Annuaire de la noblesse de France et des maisons souveraines de l'Europe . Paris 1876, p. 177
- ^ Gilles Dubois: Carnet Web de Généalogie , April 19, 2008
- ↑ Le château de Pontevès ne retournera pas dans le giron de la commune . Var-matin, December 26, 2015