Fontaine-Henry Castle
The castle Fontaine-Henry is a renaissance - castle in the French commune of Fontaine-Henry in Normandy .
It has been classified as a Monument historique since 1924 .
history
Fontaine-Henry Castle has been in the family for ten centuries without ever being sold. Nevertheless, the families changed names several times, as the castle was repeatedly passed on to women. By inheritance, it belonged alternately to the Tilly, Harcourt , Morais, Boutier de Château d'Assy, Montécler, Marguerie, Carbonnel, Cornulier and Oilliamson families.
At the beginning of the 11th century there was a medieval fortress on the site, which the Tilly family had replaced with a new castle between 1200 and 1220. The chapel and cellar vaults , which at that time formed the ground floor of the residential building, have been preserved from this period . In 1374 Jeanne de Tilly married Philippe d'Harcourt and gave him this man's castle as a dowry.
The Harcourt family began rebuilding the building after the Hundred Years War . The work spanned almost an entire century from the end of the 15th century to the 1560s.
architecture
Various styles can be observed on the west side of the castle, reflecting the evolution of the architecture of Normandy and France.
The early, very simple Gothic style was quickly replaced by the flamboyant style of the late Gothic and early French Renaissance. The most peculiar building element is to the left of this facade, where a superposition of columns can be observed. An inscription dates this to the year 1537, which seems surprisingly early for such a realization.
One of the roofs is considered to be one of the highest in France with a height of 15 meters.
The eastern facade was redesigned in the 18th and 19th centuries. There is an English garden around the castle .
The fully furnished and still inhabited castle houses a remarkable collection of paintings that were created during the revolution . Paintings by Nicolas Mignard , Rubens , Corregio and Tizian hang on the room walls .
See also
literature
- Étienne Faisant: Le chateau de Fontaine-Henry . Monuments et sites de Normandie, 2010, ISBN 978-2-919026-00-5 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Entry no. PA00111341 in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
- ↑ Dominique Auzias, Jean-Paul Labourdette: Les 100 plus beaux châteaux de France , petit futé, Nouvelles Editions de l'Université, Paris 2011, ISBN 978-2-7469-3613-3 , p. 157.
Coordinates: 49 ° 16 ′ 28 ″ N , 0 ° 27 ′ 0 ″ W.