Larra Castle

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Larra Castle, view from the southeast

The Larra Castle ( French Château de Larra ) is a baroque pleasure palace in the southern French community Larra ( Haute-Garonne ) of the region of Occitania . The property is only accessible to visitors on pre-booked group tours and on the French Heritage Open Day ( Journée du Patrimoine ). Parts of it have been under monument protection as Monument historique since December 10, 1993 . Its palace gardens and gardens are recognized as a "remarkable garden" ( Jardin Remarquable ).

history

At the site of today's castle , a mansion in the style of Louis-Treize stood in the middle of a 200-  hectare estate until the 18th century . Jean-François de Tournier-Vaillac had it abandoned in 1743 and built today's summer palace there based on Italian models by 1748. The plans for this came from the architect Guilaume Cammas , who also designed the facade of the Capitol in Toulouse . The on-site architect, however, was Toulousain Maduron, who was also responsible for the construction of Merville Castle . When the client died in 1748, the new building was not yet completed. The interior was only completed under his son Pons-Jean-François de Tournier-Vaillac. Simultaneously with the construction of the palace, a regularly designed palace park was laid out in the middle of the 18th century.

In 1875 the castle of Bathilde Marie Pierre de Tournier passed to his niece Marie Justine Louise dʼAntin, who was married to Fernand Louis de Carriere. Their descendants are still the owners of the facility and live there.

description

architecture

The main palace in the style of a Palladian villa is a square brick building with a side length of 25 meters. Its four two-story facades are all designed identically. Divided into nine axes by high windows , the centers of the facades are each accentuated by a three-axis central risalit with a triangular gable . You sit at the height of the very flat hip roof . This is surmounted by a central belvedere with a bent pyramid roof, inside of which the stairwell of the building is located.

In front of the south-east facade is the elongated court of honor which is flanked on its west side by the former orangery . It was later converted into a chapel . Its facade still shows remnants of the former ornamentation, consisting of Doric pilasters that were connected to one another by festoons .

From the south-east, a two-part, almost 250-meter-long access avenue leads to the entrance gate of the castle on the south side of the courtyard.

inside rooms

Much of the splendid and luxurious original furnishings have been preserved inside. These include valuable marble fireplaces and fountains. The reception rooms of the castle are decorated with stucco work by the sculptor Jean Loubeau. In the salons hang paintings of gallant scenes inspired by the works of François Boucher and Antoine Watteau .

The center of the interior of the castle is the large staircase. There are numerous portraits of members of the owner family hanging on its walls. The monumental staircase has a wrought iron railing, which was made in 1763 by the blacksmith Bernard Ortet from Toulouse. He also made wrought iron parts for the Capitol in Toulouse.

Castle park and gardens

The palace garden extends east of the main building. It consists of lawns that have some decorative elements. The center point is an elongated ground floor , which is surrounded by a wide path all around. At its eastern end, another path continues to the east to an octagonal water basin, in the middle of which the terracotta statue of a maritime deity once stood. On the western front of the parterre, a broderie in the form of the fleur-de-lys reminds us that today's garden shape dates from around 1890 and was modeled on the style of Achille Duchêne and his father Henri .

The 50 hectare park of the castle still has its original form from the 18th century and is located north of the garden. It is separated from this by a low wall, which is broken through by three portals with columns . The pillars of the central portal are adorned with lions. The park consists of an oak grove in which seven different oak species grow. Its southern part is criss-crossed by eight paths that run from a central point in a star shape into the forest.

literature

  • Sylvie Flandin: Le château de Larra. Architecture - decoration. Master's thesis at the University of Toulouse-Mirail, 3 volumes. Toulouse-Mirail University, Toulouse 1989.
  • Sylvie Flandin: Larra. Un château des Lumières aux portes de Toulouse. In: Fédération des Sociétés académiques et savantes Languedoc-Pyrénées-Gascogne (ed.): Toulouse et le Midi toulousain entre terre et ciel du Moyen Age à nos jours. Association des Amis des Archives de la Haute-Garonne, Toulouse 1994, pp. 331-339.

Website

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry of the castle in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
  2. ↑ a b Entry of the castle in the monument database of the Occitania region , accessed on October 1, 2018.
  3. ↑ a b Michel Hastenteufel: Château de Larra , accessed on October 1, 2018.
  4. ↑ Information according to the cadastral map available online at geoportail.gouv.fr
  5. ↑ a b Castle park and garden on the Comité des Parcs et Jardins de France website , accessed on October 1, 2018.

Coordinates: 43 ° 44 ′ 25.8 "  N , 1 ° 13 ′ 34.6"  E