La Possonnière Castle

Front of the castle

The castle La Possonnière (French: Château de la Possonnière ), also called Castle Ronsard (French: Château de Ronsard ), belongs to the French municipality of Vallée-de-Ronsard in the Loir-et-Cher department . It belongs to the smaller castles of the Loire and has been available since 1862 as a monument historique under monument protection .

history

Back of the lock

At the beginning of the 16th century, Louis de Ronsard, the father of the poet Pierre de Ronsard , returned from the Italian campaign. The impressions that Italian Renaissance architecture had left on him were so lasting that he was one of the first in France to decide to convert his country house in this style. The changes made around 1510 can be clearly seen, although only partitions were moved and reveals and chimneys were redesigned. The original decor used represents a mixture of Gothic and Italianizing forms and is thus part of the ornamentation of the early French Renaissance.

The cross-frame windows in the basement of the front of the mansion date from the time of Louis XII. Some of the upper floors have Renaissance frames. The Latin inscriptions on many of the windows catch the eye. The protruding stair tower at the back of the building has an elegant portal with a frontispiece and a bust. At the top of the turret, on the gable of the dormer window, the Ronsard coat of arms can be seen: “Three silver fish in blue”.

There is a passage between the residential wing and two large barns in the same line that clearly separates the two courtyards. The farm buildings are partially dug into the slope behind the courtyard.

Born in 1524 at La Possonnière Castle, Pierre de Ronsard spent his childhood here.

literature

• Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, Robert Polidori : Castles in the Loire Valley . Könemann, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-89508-597-9 , p. 294 .
• Castles on the Loire ; The green travel guide. Michelin Reise-Verlag, Landau-Mörlheim 1997, ISBN 2-06-711591-X , p. 324.
• The castles on the Loire . Valoire-Estel, Blois 2006, ISBN 2-909575-73-X , p. 21.

Web links

Commons : La Possonnière castle  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Photos of the castle in Base Mémoire

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Castle La Possonnière in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French), accessed on June 3, 2009.

Coordinates: 47 ° 44 ′ 49.2 "  N , 0 ° 41 ′ 31"  E