Ratilly Castle
The Ratilly Castle ( French Château de Ratilly ) is located in the Yonne department in the Burgundy region , in the densely forested Puisaye landscape and around 25 kilometers southwest of Auxerre . It was originally a moated castle .
The well-preserved ensemble from the second half of the 13th century is a four-wing structure around an almost square inner courtyard, which is surrounded at the corners by four mighty round towers and accessed on the south side via a portal flanked by similar towers. The buildings are surrounded by a now dry moat.
Despite various subsequent structural measures, especially the post-medieval changes to the southern fortifications in cozy refuges with open window fronts in the style of a castle, they have hardly lost anything of the former defensive character of a castle complex.
The castle , steeped in history, is now a cultural center, a place where numerous concerts take place every summer and contemporary artists exhibit. In 2015 the facility counted over 12,200 visitors.
history
The name "Ratilly" is probably derived from ratel (French = the harrow , the portcullis of a castle).
Ratilly was mentioned for the first time in a document from 1160 with the knight Renaud de Ratilly. As early as the 11th century, when the feudal system was established in Puisaye , a castle was built here.
Around 1270 Mathieu de Ratilly had this castle demolished down to the glacis and built a new moated castle, which, apart from the later structural corrections, largely coincided with the current structure.
During the Hundred Years' War between 1357 and 1380, the fortress belonged to Mr. Guy de Vallery, who looked after a band of Breton adventurers who were robbing the region. For example, they set the Moustier Monastery on fire.
In 1485 the knight Jean de Candiou was Seigneur von Treigny in Ratilly. After his death in 1530, his daughter Anne married Jean de la Menu, who was of Bourbon origin.
In 1567, at the beginning of the Wars of Religion, the Huguenots took possession of Ratilly and made it their main location in the Auxerrois . From here they committed numerous "looting, thefts, murders and devastation".
With the accession of Henri IV to the throne in 1589, calm fell again in Ratilly. Mary de Puy, lord of Igny near Paleiseau (south of Paris), restored Ratilly, such as the windows facing the inner courtyard, and the fireplace in the guard room, which is now a listed building, and moved into the castle in 1587.
His second daughter Jeanne married Louis de Menou, governor of the Duchy of Saint Fargeau in 1616. He restored the southern front of the castle, connecting the two towers at the back and building the now defunct Saint Anne chapel. The large three-storey "south wing" of the palace was created, which dominates the courtyard on the south side.
The aforementioned “restorations” are the “post-medieval changes to the southern fortifications into cozy refuges with open window fronts in the style of a castle”, announced at the beginning of the article. The draining of the moats around the middle of the 19th century should also be included in these changes in the defense functions.
In November 1653, Louis de Menou received the “ Grande Mademoiselle ”, who had left Saint Fargeau for a while in mourning for the death of a lady of honor . "The castle is quite small, I had only a few servants and no carriage ... I spent five to six days in this desert ...", she writes in her memoir.
In 1732, Louis Carré de Montgeron , councilor at the Paris Parliament, bought the property with the aim of helping the Abbé Terrasson, who was in exile in Treigny, in spreading Jansenist ideas . In 1735, however, Monsieur de Montgéron and the Abbé Terasson were captured and imprisoned in the Bastille . Ratilly was then sold to Pierre Frappier, landlord of Daline. In 1755 his daughter married André-Marie d'Avigneau, who came from a noble family in Auxerre .
In 1849 the property was transferred to Charles-Louis Vivien, Justice of the Peace at Saint Fargeau. He maintained the castle excellently and, among other things, had the moats drained and orchards planted.
In 1912 Ratilly was sold to Juliette-Ernestine Bernard, the widow of Charles-Joseph d'Alincourt. She lived there alone and died in 1945 without leaving any major fortune. She bequeathed Ratilly to Canons Grossier, archaeologist and teacher in the seminary of Sens , knowing that he would keep it as good as possible. Indeed, the canon ordered extensive repairs to the roof. Due to his old age, he soon felt no longer up to the task and in 1951 sold Ratilly to interested parties whom he trusted. The buyers were Jeanne and Norbert Pierlo, a potter and an actor. They set up an Atelier de grès (= stoneware manufacture) in Ratilly, which they expanded into a cultural center with workshops, concerts and exhibitions. After her death, the center is continued by her children, who are supported by the Association des amis de Ratilly.
Buildings / architecture
The visitor is greeted by an inviting panorama of the south facade of today's castle, which he approaches on a long straight access path lined with hedges.
Originally, the south facade of the former castle had a repellent and fortress-like appearance, as it was completely closed apart from a few slit-like arrow slits and the portal protected by a portcullis . Today's large windows were only created at a time when such systems were no longer used for defense purposes and firearms no longer offered resistance.
The facade is dominated by a wide three-storey wing, in the middle of which the arched portal opens. It was so big that it could also be used by mounted people and wagons. Half round towers protrude from the wide main wing on both sides of the portal, which served to protect the portal.
Today's stone bridge, which leads from the “mainland” over the moat, which was once filled with water, to the portal, had a predecessor in the form of a wooden drawbridge . The bridge, which was raised in the event of a defense, together with the lowered portcullis in front of the closed wooden portal, offered adequate protection.
The formerly crenellated towers are covered by steeply inclined conical roofs , the broad south wing of the castle behind it, with a gable roof . The wall between the two round towers merges further up into a tower with a square floor plan, which is covered with a helmet in the form of a truncated pyramid, the sides of which are rounded outwards. It is crowned by an octagonal lantern with an octagonal pyramid roof . In contrast to the other roofs of the castle, the helmet is not covered with red tile shingles , but with small-format gray slate shingles. It clearly towers above all other towers. The towering chimneys show that the rooms in the south wing could be heated with chimneys or stoves.
The south-facing outer walls of the south wing merge into significantly lower defensive walls on both sides , which soon come up against the first two round defensive towers on the four corners of the palace complex, which extends behind the south wing. These towers are slightly lower than those in front of the south wing. The defensive walls were monitored and defended from here.
The southwest round tower was a pigeon tower in which numerous pigeons were kept and could breed. On the inside, there are nesting niches in the walls for around 1000 nests, in which the breeding pairs could raise their young. A ladder is suspended from wooden turnstiles, through which one can reach every nest, even at great heights. The pigeons were kept to enrich the men’s menu.
A stone toilet bay is installed on the east and south walls . The location above the moat suggests that they were created solely for this purpose and not for defensive purposes, such as military keepers or machicolations .
The almost square courtyard is enclosed on all sides by buildings, the outer walls of which originally formed the defensive walls and were accordingly thicker and only had openings in the form of slit-like arrow slits. On the west, north and east walls, the slits have only become small windows.
On the courtyard side, these wings are only one-story, on the outside they appear to be two-story due to the moat. The staff, the cattle and horse stables and the storage rooms were housed in the ground floor tracts. Correspondingly, the walls on the courtyard side are clearly more perforated than those on the ditch side. They are covered with gable roofs.
The castle courtyard offered space for kitchen garden areas, storage areas for the dung of the cattle, movement areas for the small cattle and for the activities of the staff.
Southeast tower from SW
Aborterker south wall
South wing, courtyard side
Guard room with fireplace
Living room with fireplace
literature
- Château de Ratilly. Information sheet. no year
Web links
- Castle website (French)
- Text and pictures about the castle (French)
- Virtual tour (French)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Agence de Developpement Touristique de l'Yonne in Bourgogne: Les site et mionuments de l'Yonne. Self-published, Auxerre 2016, p. 2 ( PDF ; 772 kB).
- ↑ Château de Ratilly. Information sheet. no year
Coordinates: 47 ° 33 ′ 16 ″ N , 3 ° 10 ′ 2 ″ E