Le Grand-Pressigny castle
The Le Grand-Pressigny castle belongs to the French community Le Grand-Pressigny in Indre-et-Loire in the region Center-Val de Loire . The village lies at the confluence of the Claise and Aigronne rivers and was once protected by the castle built by Guillaume de Pressigny , which towers on the bank . Parts of today's palace complex were added to the French list of monuments in July 1889 as Monument historique .
The surrounding wall with round towers from the 14th century and the fortified gate of the castle have been preserved, as well as the remains of the 34-meter-high, square donjon that Guillaume I. de Pressigny built at the end of the 12th century. The latter was appointed banner lord of the French king Philip II in 1204 .
Around 1550, Honorat II. De Savoie, marquis de Villars , a cousin of the French King Francis I , expanded the complex into a residence in the style of the Italian Renaissance . The living quarters, which separates in the middle of the "New Castle" courtyard and atrium, perhaps dates back to the years around 1520 parts were rebuilt in 1560: the strange-looking, with machicolations occupied and crowned by a dome so-called "Vironne Tower", then the aedicule above a fountain at the foot of the donjon and perhaps the wing with portico on the ground floor and gallery on the upper floor between the courtyard and the farmyard .
Le Grand-Pressigny Castle is now home to the “Musée departemental de Préhistoire” founded in 1910. Prehistoric finds from excavations in the Touraine are exhibited there , which provide an insight into the techniques of stone processing, because at the end of the Neolithic there were numerous workshops in the vicinity in which flint blades were produced in series, some for "export". The Coeur de Birette is a polissoir set up in the garden of the facility for sharpening flint blades. A small paleontological section of the museum contains fossils that have been found in the Touraine and particularly in the deposits north and south of the Loire .
literature
- Jean-Pierre Babelon: Châteaux de France au siècle de la Renaissance . Flammarion, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-08-012062-X , pp. 364 .
- Comte de Galembert: Notice sur le Château du Grand-Pressigny . In: Mémoires de la Société archéologique de Touraine . No. 1, 1857, pp. 83-86.
- Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, Robert Polidori : Castles in the Loire Valley . Könemann, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-89508-597-9 , p. 190-191 .
- Castles on the Loire . The green travel guide. Michelin Reise-Verlag, Landau-Mörlheim 1997, ISBN 2-06-711591-X , p. 203.
Web links
- Dossier on the castle from Base Mérimée (French)
- Marie Bardisa: Bourg du Grand-Pressigny (French)
- Le Grand-Pressigny Castle in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
- Pictures of the palace complex from Base Mémoire: Part 1 and Part 2
- Le Grand-Pressigny Castle on 37-online.net (French, English)
- Le Grand-Pressigny castle. In: Structurae
Individual evidence
- ^ Castle Le Grand-Pressigny in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French), accessed on July 20, 2009.
Coordinates: 46 ° 55 ′ 18 ″ N , 0 ° 48 ′ 12 ″ E