Commercy Castle
The Commercy Castle is a Baroque building in the same city in the French department of Meuse , of there by Charles Henri de Lorraine-Vaudemont in place of a medieval castle was built. Part of the county of Saarbrücken , it came into the possession of the Dukes of Lorraine at the beginning of the 18th century . Its facade design shows similarities to the Lunéville Castle .
history
Commercy Castle was first mentioned in a document in 967. Around 1100, Richwin von Commercy was first mentioned as a noble family named after the place. Through the marriage of Simons von Commercy with Mathilde von Saarbrücken, the Commercy rule was united with the county of Saarbrücken after the death of the last Saarbrücken count in 1274. Under Count Johann II , an inheritance was divided in 1344, whereby the younger line to Commercy kept the name "Sarrebruck". In 1381 the Counts of Saarbrücken-Commercy were inherited by the Counts of Nassau, who in 1444 sold the Commercy estate to Louis de Bar.
The Commercy line died out in 1551 with Damoiselle Philippe von Commercy. In the following years there were multiple changes of ownership. Special mention should be made of Paul de Gondi , Cardinal de Retz, who wrote most of his famous memoirs here. Under the count and later Prince Charles Henri de Lorraine-Vaudémont (1649–1723), the castle and town were converted into a baroque residence . Germain Boffrand probably provided the drafts for the plans for the palace, which was built between 1708 and 1717 . After Charles Henri's death, Commercy fell to the Duchess of Lorraine Elisabeth Charlotte, who resided there until her death in 1744. The Polish King Stanislaus I. Leszczyński , who was exiled in Lorraine, then used the castle as a secondary residence and had Emmanuel Héré create the gardens and extend the castle wings.
After the death of Stanislaus in 1766, when the Duchy of Lorraine fell to France, the facilities were neglected. In the period from 1767 to 1927 the castle served as a cavalry barracks . It was badly damaged in 1944 and only rebuilt in the 1960s.
description
Originally there were two castles in Commercy: the older "Upper Castle", in the place of which is the current castle, for which the Counts of Saarbrücken-Commercy were granted the right to build a donjon when the estate was divided in 1344 , and the "Lower Castle" , a moated castle on the banks of the Meuse .
The substructures with three round towers of the “Upper Castle” that Héré converted into a garden terrace have been preserved in today's castle .
The baroque palace building with a court of honor is reminiscent of the central projection of the Lunéville Palace with its colossal Ionic column arrangement . The side wings were continued by Héré in concave stables galleries with vases and trophies with a narrow passage to the city. The Palace Square is reminiscent of St. Peter's Square in Rome. The castle axis runs right through the village as a road (Rue Carnot), which continues for several kilometers to the next chain of hills (today a forest path). On the garden side there was once a water parterre, which Héré had extended from the Meuse Canal, with sculptures of Neptune and Amphitrite . The “Point de Vue” ended with a “Château d'eau” 550 meters away with cascades .
literature
- Stéphanie Chapotot: Les jardins du roi Stanislas en Lorraine . Editions Serpenoise, Metz 1999, ISBN 2-87692-423-4 .
- Martin Tronquart: Commercy . Editions Serpinoise, Metz 1993, ISBN 2-87692-171-5 .
Web links
- Commercy Castle. In: Structurae (French)
Coordinates: 48 ° 45 ′ 49.2 " N , 5 ° 35 ′ 31.8" E