Luynes Castle
Luynes Castle in Luynes is located in a side valley north of the Loire in the Indre-et-Loire department in the Center-Val de Loire region in France . The castle was once the seat of the barony and later county of Maillé , which is why the complex was called Maillé Castle until the 17th century .
In the 11th century built and in 1096 the Count of Anjou destroyed, it was the beginning of the 12th century by Lord rebuilt from Maillé. In the Hundred Years' War , the then played Castle Maillé an important role.
From 1619 Charles d'Albert, lord of Luynes in Provence , now part of Aix , and favorite of Louis VIII , was the owner. He achieved a conversion into a peerage with the name of the Duchy of Luynes with the king .
The castle, which is still privately owned and now open to visitors, is an imposing sight high above the town. The basic form of the fortress probably comes from the time of the new building in the 12th century. The walls form a square ring, which is secured on three sides by mighty round towers. Some of them are also missing or have no roof. The west side with its four round towers completes the impressive picture of medieval fortress architecture.
In the time of Louis XI. Hardouin de Maillé had large windows broken into towers and curtain walls and an elegant residential building built on the inside of the western wall, which is very similar to that of the Plessis-lès-Tours castle . The building offered the typical image of a small castle: brick and quarry stone , a tower with a spiral staircase , large window crosses and high portholes . However, the residential wing was changed significantly at the end of the 19th century.
In a second construction phase in the 17th century, the open south side was closed with another logis . Of this part of the building in the classical Baroque style , however, only the side wings facing the courtyard remain. During this time the donjon , an important part of the original structure, was demolished.
Web links
literature
- Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, Robert Polidori : Castles in the Loire Valley . Könemann, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-89508-597-9 , p. 234 .
- Eve Mercier-Sivadjian, Jean-Louis Sivadjian: Châteaux du Moyen Age en France . Larousse, Paris 1985, ISBN 2-03-5091047 , p. 50.
Coordinates: 47 ° 23 ′ 12 ″ N , 0 ° 33 ′ 12 ″ E