Beaumesnil Castle
The Beaumesnil Castle ( French Château de Beaumesnil ) was in Beaumesnil from 1631 to 1640 in the Baroque style Louis XIII. built. It is classified as a Monument historique (historical monument). The castle has a 50 hectare park with gardens à la française . A bookbinding museum is located in the furnished castle .
history
The builders
Jacques le Conte, Marquis de Nonant and Baron de Beaumesnil, had the castle built for his wife Marie Dauvet Desmaret on the site of a medieval castle ( Motte ). The medieval castle was built around 1250. Parts of the boxwood-covered donjon still exist. Marie Dauvet Desmaret was the granddaughter of Nicolas Brûlart de Sillery (1544-1624) who had been Chancellor of France . She continued construction work after her husband's death.
Martin and Toussaint Laflèche, two master masons from Feucherolles (in the Yvelines department ) who worked from drawings by the Marquis de Nonant, worked on the construction in 1631 . Also in 1631 the carpenter Jean Loiseau did all the carpentry work on the masonry and created the floors. The master mason Jean Gaillard from Rouen had the facade on the courtyard side built in the same year and was in charge of the masonry work at that time. He had Baptiste Bastard and Jean Beauroulles, master masons from Saint-Pierre-de-Cernières , do the masonry work on the terrace side.
In 1633, Jean Gaillard met with the Marquis de Nonant to discuss the size of the stones on the first floor. In 1638 a roofer named Gervais Lemarinier is mentioned. Jacques-François Leclerc sculptor and fountain builder ( Fontainier ) had not yet finished working on the sculptures in June 1639.
The only son Jacques Le Conte de Nonants died in 1654 at the age of 20. His sister Catherine then inherited Beaumesnil. She married Hérard Bouton , Comte de Chamilly and Governor of Dijon († 1672) six years later .
Later owners
Horse stable and carriage shed were built in 1706.
By marriage the castle came into the possession of the Martel de Graville family . From 1735 to 1757 the Marquise Martel de Graville had the windows enlarged, an avenue of linden trees planted and the park redesigned. There is a plan of the park from 1760.
Also by marriage, the fief fell to the de Béthune family . Armand-Joseph de Béthune (1738–1800), peer of France and Duc of Béthune-Charost, made Beaumesnil his preferred residence. His son was guillotined on April 27, 1794 during the French Revolution and left no heirs. On December 29, 1793, the castle's archives were burned, and in June and July 1794, the castle's furniture was auctioned.
After Béthune-Charost's death, Beaumesnil fell to the Montmorency-Laval family in 1802 through the marriage of the widow Maximilienne-Augustine de Bethune to Eugène de Montmorency-Laval († 1851) . Eugène de Montmorency-Laval received the title of duke after the death of his older brother Mathieu de Montmorency-Laval . In 1819 he had the parish church of Saint-Nicolas built at the entrance to the castle grounds.
From 1830, landscaping facilities were added, some of which were removed by the restoration work in the years after 1950.
In 1833, Eugène de Montmorency-Laval married the daughter of the writer Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) and bequeathed the castle to his brother-in-law Rodolphe de Maistre (1789-1866).
The neo-Gothic burial chapel is dated 1835. It was designed by the Swiss architect Joseph-Antoine Froelicher. The pavilions were enlarged in the 19th century.
Dmitri Pawlowitsch Romanow (born September 18, 1891 to † March 5, 1942), Grand Duke of Russia , owned the palace from 1937, but sold it to Jean Furstenberg in 1939, who had the palace refurnished and restored.
Jean Furstenberg (1890–1982) (actually "Hans Fürstenberg") was a German banker . He had an important book collection, German original editions, woodcuts, French books from the 18th century and beautiful bindings. In 1936 he fled to Paris with his 16,000 books . Furstenberg contacted the Bibliothèque nationale de France (French national library , BN for short ) and donated 700 first editions of German books to the library. When the German army marched on Paris, the BN relocated some valuable manuscripts to Beaumesnil Castle. The Archives de France moved the Rouen archives to the castle. Shortly before the arrival of the Germans, some of the manuscripts and books were sent to the south of France by train. When Beaumesnil was occupied, part of the archives were destroyed and part was moved to Paris. Furstenberg's books were confiscated by Reichsleiter Rosenberg's operations staff and taken to the central library of the NSDAP's high school in Berlin.
Todays use
Today the castle is owned by the Fondation Fürstenberg-Beaumesnil , recognized as a non-profit foundation , which has been trying to preserve the castle and making it possible to visit the castle since Jean Fürstenberg's death. Visits are possible from Easter to September.
investment
building
Today's Beaumesnil Castle is unique in France, comparable only to the Fontaine Médicis and the Hôtel de Sully in Paris .
The actual castle consists of a main building which is flanked by two smaller pavilions. Froelicher changed the pavilions in the 19th century so that they were more in keeping with classicism . They owe their present appearance to Henri Jacquelin, a Norman architect who was born in Évreux and who also restored Hattonchâtel Castle . He had the pavilions provided with sculptures again around 1921. The main building has four floors, a basement, two floors and an attic. It is not exactly aligned with the cardinal points, the front is roughly towards the west.
The windows are surrounded by columns and pilasters. Above the windows are triangular pediments adorned with spheres, vases, cherubs , heraldic and military attributes and masks of the Commedia dell'arte . The roof gable and the large chimneys are also decorated in this way. During the changes that were made to the windows on the ground floor from 1735 to 1757, their decorations were removed and iron bars were installed instead. The coats of arms of the Montmorency-Laval and Béthune-Charost families were modeled over the entrance in the 19th century. The builder's coat of arms can be found on the roof gable of the east facade.
The staircase inside the castle is tapered towards the top and therefore gives the impression of great height. The salon has ornate oak wall paneling that Gonzague de Maistre (1873–1936) had designed based on the wall paneling in the Palace of Versailles . Today the dining room, library and some other rooms contain antique furniture and the collections of the book cover museum.
Green spaces
Of the gardens that were set up at the same time as the castle, only the statues remain. However, some of the statues have lost their original expression due to restoration work. The original gardens were designed by Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie (1626–1688), who also designed the Potager du roi , the king's vegetable garden, in Versailles. The original baroque gardens contained a vegetable garden on the left, pleasure gardens and fruit trees on the right of the castle (as seen from the entrance). There was also a maze. A canal on the right, dating from the 18th century, supplied gardens and moats with water. In the 19th century the gardens were turned into a park, the linden alley was preserved.
Today's "Garden of the Four Seasons" between the moat and the courtyard was laid out in the 19th century as the "Madame's Garden", although there were trees in it at that time. In 1927 the trees were felled, lawns were planted and a well was built.
The castle is surrounded by a large moat that is connected to the main courtyard by a bridge at the front of the castle . The original terrace was only 23 meters wide and 4.5 meters long, but was enlarged in the 18th century. Jean Furstenberg and his wife set up small, enclosed gardens in the style of a monastery garden on one side of the main courtyard. You lead on to the so-called "half moon", a baroque garden with a broderie parterre .
The remains of the moth were used as an ice house. In the 19th century, a walkable path was laid out on the moth overgrown with boxwood.
Monument protection
On May 8, 1926, the castle was entered in the additional directory of the Monuments historiques. Parts of the palace that were classified later were removed from the additional directory. Classified parts are: facades, roofs, the large staircase inside the palace, the courtyard, the moat, the ensemble of park and terrace and the moth. The classification took place on December 20, 1966. The park itself, the forecourt, the orchard, the fenced garden with its facilities, bars and gates, facades and roofs of the pavilions and the staff entrance were entered in the supplementary directory of the Monuments historiques on February 5, 1997.
literature
- Bertrand Jestaz: Le Château de Beaumesnil . In: Congrès archéologique de France . tape 138 . Société Française d'Archéologie, 1984, p. 191-217 (French).
- Jean Furstenberg: Architecture et chronique du Château de Beaumesnil . Picard, 1970 (French).
- Auguste Bouillet: Le Chateau de Beaumesnil (Eure): histoire et description . H. Delesques, Caen 1890 (French).
- Henri Quevilly: Histoire de Beaumesnil . Reprint of the original edition from 1873. Res Universis, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-87760-186-2 (French).
Web links
- Official website (French / English)
- Beaumesnil Castle as a 3D model in SketchUp's 3D warehouse
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Beaumesnil Castle in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French), accessed on August 14, 2011.
- ↑ a b c d e f Franck Beaumont, Philippe Seydoux: Gentilhommières des pays de l'Eure . Editions de la Morande, Paris 1999, ISBN 2-902091-31-2 ( formally incorrect ) , p. 308-310 (French).
- ↑ a b Auguste Le Prévost , Léopold Delisle , Louis Paulin Passy, Société d'agriculture des belles-lettres, sciences et arts de L'Eure, Évreux: Mémoires et notes de M. Auguste Le Prevost pour servir à l'histoire du département de l'Eure . Hérissey, 1862, p. 198–200 (French, in Google Books ).
- ↑ Regine Dehnel, Sem C. Sutter (Ed.): Jewish book possession as looted property: second Hanover Symposium (= magazine for libraries and bibliography . No. 88 ). Vittorio Klostermann, 2006, ISBN 3-465-03448-1 , p. 126–129 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
- ^ A b A. Blanchard, M. Delafenêtre, Lisa Pascual: Jardins en Normandie . Your. Connaissance des Jardins, Caen 2001, ISBN 2-912454-07-7 , pp. 62 (French).
Coordinates: 49 ° 0 '48.7 " N , 0 ° 42' 40" E