La Bussière Castle
The La Bussiere Castle ( French Château de La Bussiere ) is a moated castle at the edge of the French community of La Bussière in the Region Center-Val de Loire . It is about ten kilometers northeast of Gien in the southeast of the Loiret department in the Puisaye . The complex is one of the Loire castles and is also located on the Jacques-Cœur route . Some parts have been inscribed as Monument historique in the French list of monuments since November 1993 , after a first protected status from February 1982 was canceled . In May 1995, further parts of the castle , which is privately owned, were classified as Monument historique.
The property can be visited for a fee from the beginning of April to the end of October and houses a fishing museum , which is why it is also called the Castle of the Fishermen (French Château des Pêcheurs ). In addition, in the summer there are occasional classical concerts in the castle courtyard, and some castle rooms can be rented for festivities or seminars.
description
The palace complex consists of a Logis that on an almost square island in a roughly six hectares is measured castle pond, and east of it situated outer bailey . A wrought-iron gate between two baroque entrance pavilions ( pavillons de conciergerie ) from the 17th century provides access to the palace area on the east side . To the north of the two building complexes are the gardens of the palace. The property is completed by a predominantly forested castle park , a small part of which is designed as an English landscape garden.
architecture
The main building of the castle, which is surrounded by water, is a two-winged building with high slate roofs, most of which was built using the technique known as Brique-et-Pierre , which means that it has red brick masonry with walls made of light stone . The brick walls have a diamond-shaped pattern created by two different stone colors and are very similar to the nearby Gien Castle . The building was erected in the 17th century on the basement of the medieval predecessor building and possibly took over its floor plan. For example, the four corners of the castle island are still marked today by round towers or remnants of them, and the northern, undeveloped side of the island is closed off by a fortified circular wall . A three-storey gate tower from before 1550 adjoins the logis on the east side . The walls of its two lower floors are made of light-colored stone blocks, while the top floor has brick walls. The appearance of the northern part of the building results from extensive restoration work in the 19th century.
The outer bailey buildings are a conglomerate of medieval parts and a horseshoe-shaped structure in the Louis-Treize style , which dates from the 17th century. Like the Logis, its walls have diamond-shaped patterns made of bricks of different colors. Since the 13th century, the outer bailey was protected by a second curtain wall with a moat in front , over which a drawbridge led to the entrance. The trenches were filled in in the 19th century, but remnants of the bridge construction are still visible today at the so-called clock pavilion (French pavillon de l'Horloge ), a high pavilion tower with an entrance gate to the outer bailey. The gate tower with lantern and weather vane is followed by a wing of the building, in which the former courtroom (French le tribunal ) is located. He is a witness of a time when the lords of the castle exercised high and low jurisdiction . In the courtroom there are still remains of a wall painting in the form of a cross, on which the witnesses had to swear at court hearings. Other farm buildings in the outer bailey are the former tithe barn , the horse stables, the orangery and a pigeon tower . The latter is a massive round tower with a flat conical roof , which previously flanked the access to the castle with an identical counterpart. There are 1200 nesting holes inside.
Castle park and gardens
The approximately 65 hectare green area of the castle La Bussière is enclosed by a four kilometer long wall and has been awarded a Jardin remarquable (German: remarkable garden). It consists largely of forest, which is criss-crossed by a system of paths ( hunting star ) and is currently being restored and reforested in terms of garden conservation . Together with a baroque garden , the park was laid out in the 18th century according to designs by the chief royal garden architect André Le Nôtre . There are numerous old trees in it, such as a 300-year-old Lebanon cedar or a copper beech that was planted in 1910 when the garden was restored at the beginning of the 20th century.
The almost rectangular, six-hectare castle pond has medieval roots and was previously used as a fish pond. It is fed by the Vernisson , a tributary of the Puiseaux .
Since 1992 the castle owners have gradually restored and restored the 1.5 hectare kitchen garden of the property. Surrounded by a low, 600-meter-long wall, its basic concept dates from the 18th century and originally served to supply the around 50 people living in the castle. The area he occupied served as a vineyard for the castle owners in the 17th century. Smaller paths flanked by fruit trees branch off from a central avenue to a total of twelve beds with old vegetables, medicinal plants and herbs , some of which are framed by box hedges . In addition to winter vegetables and pumpkins , cut flowers and various types of fruit are also grown in the kitchen garden. In addition to berries , 65 different types of pear and 42 different types of apples grow there.
Kitchen garden
Pumpkins in the kitchen garden
Pumpkins in the kitchen garden
Cut flower beds
history
The present castle goes back to a medieval foundation of the Seigneurs de Feins in the 12th century, of whom Étienne de Feins was mentioned in a document as the first family member in 1208. The castle of that time was supposed to protect the Île-de-France against the Burgundians and was part of a whole belt of castles along the border between these two territories. In addition, the fortification controlled the important trade route between Paris and Lyon . This made La Bussière one of the most important rulers in the region.
By inheritance the property came to the House of Sancerre , before it was Étienne Fromont, under Louis XII. first President of the Paris Parliament , inherited. In 1518 the property finally came to Jean du Tillet, whose family remained the owners for almost 300 years.
In 1567, 15 Catholic priests from Gien fled to the castle of La Bussière during the Wars of Religion , which was then besieged by Huguenot troops . The castle crew finally had to surrender. The clergy were beheaded and the castle was almost completely destroyed by Huguenot soldiers. Jean II. Du Tillet had the destroyed complex rebuilt with a different design in the 16th century. The former castle was converted into a palace. Charles du Tillet added the current farm buildings to it around 1680. His descendant Jean-Baptiste du Tillet was an influential courtier at the court of the Sun King Louis XIV. Among other things, he was chairman of the Grand Council (French: Grand Conseil ). During his reign, La Bussière was promoted to marquisate . On the occasion of a visit to the Grande Mademoiselle , Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier , he had his castle expanded and rebuilt. This included the construction of two baroque entrance pavilions and the erection of a four-kilometer-long surrounding wall. In addition, he commissioned the construction of a spacious palace park , which was carried out according to plans by the garden architect André Le Nôtre, and had an approximately six-hectare palace pond dug that still surrounds the island with the palace's lodgings .
La Bussière Castle was confiscated during the French Revolution after the du Tillet family emigrated. Auctioned as a national property, the plant came to the former castle administrator of the du Tillets, who returned it to his former employers after they had returned to France after the end of the revolution. But the family could not keep the castle because of the high maintenance costs and sold it to the timber merchant Lefort, who in 1814 sold it to the Count of Chasseval. His descendants are still the owners of the facility today. They not only restored the buildings, but also had the baroque gardens restored and redesigned by the landscape architect Édouard André from 1910 onwards , before they opened the palace to visitors in 1962.
Now used as a museum
Henri de Chasseval opened the castle to the public together with his wife in 1962 and exhibited his private collection on inland fishing in some rooms . Little by little, more and more rooms were opened for viewing. Today, in addition to the fishing exhibition in the logis, visitors to the castle can visit the gardens, the horse stables and the saddlery in the outer bailey.
The exhibits on the subject of fishing are presented in ten rooms in the main building. The exhibits include art objects such as faience , porcelain and paintings, as well as fishing tackle, old documents and fishery products. A special feature of the exhibition is a 1.2 meter long coelacanth that was caught in 1974 off the Comoros in the Indian Ocean .
In addition to the fishing exhibition, the main focus is on the presentation of the castle rooms in which the exhibits can be seen. They often still have their original equipment and furniture. The center of the cellar rooms, equipped with a brick vault , of which a part previously served as a wine cellar, is the castle kitchen with its large fireplace from the time of Louis XIII. and a small oven. The water pump installed there provided the water supply for the castle until 1920, while the stove in the kitchen with its hot water tank on the side was in operation until 1950. Next to the kitchen is the servants' room, in which the castle staff, which used to be around 30 people, did most of their work. Today only three gardeners work on the property and three castle guides during the season.
Like most of the rooms in the castle, the study is furnished with furniture in the style of the Second Empire and is just as uniform in its furnishings as the boudoir in a small corner tower of the main building. Its colorful, oriental style and the parquet in the shape of a sun result from the fact that the room was furnished at the time of the French conquest of Algeria . The interior of the large dining room, on the other hand, is less homogeneous. Furnished in the Louis-Treize style during the 19th century, it has four valuable wall coverings made of corduan leather , which were made in Mechelen , Belgium in the 17th century . The ceiling is also in the style of Louis XIII. and owes its good state of preservation to a restoration in the 19th century. However, the room's large fireplace, designed by Léon de Chasseval around 1860, mixes the features of different eras. In addition to the salamander emblem of the French King Francis I, it shows a bust of Henry IV and the coats of arms of the Chasseval and Béthune de Sully families to draw attention to the relationship between the two houses.
The former billiard room has a wall covering that is also remarkable in terms of art history. It is a painted wallpaper from the end of the 18th century from a Parisian studio. In addition, the room is furnished with a secretary made of fruit wood in the Louis quatorze style . In the room there are two paintings with the portraits of two family members: the installed portrait of Jean-Baptiste du Tillet is attributed to Charles Le Brun , while the second picture on the wall shows Jean-Baptiste's daughter-in-law Jeanne Marguerite Lefèvre d'Ormesson and by Nicolas de Largillière should have been painted.
The newest room in the Logis is the so-called veranda. It was added to the building based on Venetian models around 1860 and has two large arched windows that open up a view of the castle pond. The thick, former outer wall, which now separates the room from the castle's small salon, is evidence of the late construction period of the room .
literature
- Dominique Auzias, Jean-Paul Labourdette: Le Petit Futé. Châteaux de la Loire . 6th edition. Petit Futé, Paris 2009. ISBN 274692501X , p. 373 ( online ).
- Armand Durlewanger: Castles of the Loire Valley . SAEP, Colmar-Ingersheim 1982, p. 7.
- Patrizia Fabbri (Red.): Art and History. Castles and cities of the Loire . Bonechi, Florenz 2003, ISBN 88-8029-705-8 , p. 12 ( online ).
- Philippe Gloaguen: Le guide du Routard. Châteaux de la Loire 1998/99 . Hachette, Paris 1998, ISBN 2-01-242772-3 , pp. 138-139.
- Robert de Laroche, Catherine Bibollet: Châteaux, parcs et jardins en vallée de la Loire . Renaissance Du Livre, Tournai 2003, ISBN 2-8046-0754-2 , pp. 17-26.
Web links
La Bussière Castle as a 3D model in SketchUp's 3D warehouse
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Entry of the castle in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
- ^ A b Nicola Williams, Virginie Boone: The Loire. 2nd Edition. Lonely Planet, Oakland 2002, ISBN 1864503580 , p. 143 ( digitized ).
- ↑ a b c Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos (ed.): Le guide du patrimoine. Center - Loire Valley. Hachette, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-01-018538-2 , p. 238.
- ↑ A. Durlewanger: Castles of the Loire Valley. 1982, p. 7.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i French information accompanying the castle tour. O. O. o. J., o. P.
- ↑ a b c d German-language accompanying information on the castle tour. O. O. o. J., o. P.
- ↑ La Bussières park and vegetable garden on the Comité des Parcs et Jardins de France website , accessed January 1, 2012.
- ^ Françoise Vibert-Guigue (ed.): Center, château de la Loire. Hachette, Paris 1991, ISBN 2-01-015564-5 , p. 480.
- ^ R. de Laroche, C. Bibollet: Châteaux, parcs et jardins en vallée de la Loire. 2003, p. 19 ( online ).
- ^ Description of the kitchen garden on the castle website , accessed on December 31, 2016.
- ^ P. Fabbri: Art and History. Castles and cities of the Loire. 2003, p. 12.
- ^ Henri Stein: Chronique bibliographique gâtinaise. In: Annales de la Société historique et archéologique du Gâtinais. Ernest Bourges, Fontainebleau 1891, p. 153 ( online ).
- ↑ Information according to the information board on the property
- ^ Description on the castle website , accessed December 31, 2016.
Coordinates: 47 ° 44 ′ 50.9 " N , 2 ° 44 ′ 49.1" E