Monte Christo Castle

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Monte Christo Castle, entrance facade

The Monte Christo Castle ( French Château de Monte-Cristo ) is a small castle that the writer Alexandre Dumas had built in Le Port-Marly ( Yvelines ) in the second quarter of the 19th century . After lengthy restorations in the 1970s to 1990s, it has been open to visitors since June 1994.

Since 1975 were part of the castle as a monument historique under monument protection . The associated palace park was added to the list of monuments on November 3, 1987 . On July 5, 2016, the entire property was placed under protection.

history

Monte Christo Castle around 1907

The great financial success of his novels The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Christo made it possible for Alexandre Dumas to gradually buy nine hectares of forest land near Le Port-Marly from 1844 onwards, and then a small Neo-Renaissance style castle to be built as a quiet place to live and work. The French architect Hippolyte Durand provided the plans . The name of the new building is based on Dumas' latest novel The Count of Monte Christo . Construction began in 1845, and just a year and a half later the project was completed in 1846. On July 25th, 1847 the inauguration took place in the presence of 600 guests. This was the first major event in a series of festivals and parties that Dumas regularly held on his estate. Due to his horrific debts, however, on March 22, 1849 he was forced to sell Monte Christo Castle to Jacques-Antoine Doyen for only 31,000 francs, even though the construction had cost him several hundred thousand francs. Just a few months later, Dumas also had to sell the castle's valuable furniture. Although he was allowed to stay there, he fled to Belgium in 1851 from his still high debts. In 1857 the property came to a Mr. Fowler. It was bought by a Mr Fontaine in 1894 before the Société civile immobilière (SCI) acquired it in 1939. From 1954 she rented it to the British School of Paris .

Neglected and run-down, the castle was to be demolished in the late 1960s to make way for a residential project. The historian Alain Decaux then published an article in the newspaper Le Figaro in 1970 , which campaigned for the preservation of the castle. Together with the Société des Amis dʼAlexandre Dumas ( German  Society of Friends of Alexandre Dumasʼ ), founded in the same year , Decaux and Georges Poisson were able to draw the public's attention to the case. As a result, no demolition permit was granted and the communities of Le Port-Marly, Marly-le-Roi and Le Pecq merged into a syndicate that bought the palace complex and the park in 1972. As a first step , a building called Château dʼIf in the castle park was then restored from 1975 . The end of this work was celebrated in 1983 with 10,000 visitors. With the support of the Moroccan King Hassan II , who was a big Dumas fan, central heating was installed in the castle in 1985 and the ground floor and first floor were repaired. The so-called Moorish Salon and the Moorish Room were completely restored by Moroccan artisans. Another major restoration campaign followed in the period from 1990 to 1994, before the castle opened its doors to visitors as an interior museum in June 1994 . The exhibition is dedicated to Alexandre Dumas and his work. Today, cultural events such as festivals, theater performances and exhibitions take place there.

From 2015 to 2016, restoration and repair measures were carried out again, primarily intended to protect the castle from moisture penetration. In addition, the water system in the castle park was overhauled. The cost of the measure amounted to over 900,000 euros.

description

The Château dʼIf southwest of the castle

The palace complex is located in the northwest of the municipality in the immediate vicinity of the national road 13 . The property consists of the main castle, a small castle-like building to the west of it and a nine-hectare castle park based on English models . The park has artificial grottos , a hedge labyrinth , fountains and cascades that are fed by several natural springs. Old larches , firs , oaks , birches , hornbeams and linden trees grow on the plants .

The main castle is a three-storey building in the neo-renaissance style with a rectangular floor plan. On the south-western entrance facade there are two polygonal towers that protrude like risalit from the wall. They are closed by a hood with a lantern and the initials Alexandre Dumas'. A similar tower also stands in the middle of the north-eastern long side of the building. The facades of the castle are richly decorated with sculptures. The motifs are flowers, angels, musical instruments and animals. Portrait medallions of writers and poets whom Dumas worshiped hang over the larger windows; including Shakespeare , Homer , Dante , Virgil and Goethe . Above the main portal is the portrait of the builder, made by the sculptor Choiselat Ambroise . The small, segment-arched gable shows the coat of arms of Dumas’ ancestors, the Davy de la Pailleterie family, and the writer's personal motto: Jʼaime qui mʼaime ( German  I love who loves me ).

Inside, some rooms on the ground floor and first floor have been set up as an interior museum, including a boudoir , the master's room, guest rooms and salons . However, the furniture and fittings are no longer original because they were auctioned off in 1849 and scattered around the world. Only the Moorish salon and Moorish room still have the original furnishings. Dumas had the two rooms furnished after he returned from a trip to North Africa. The stucco walls and ceilings with incised arabesques were designed by artists who also worked for the Bey of Tunis . The originally simple wooden floor was replaced by colorful ceramic tiles in the 1980s . At the same time, the salon's stained glass windows were being restored.

To the southwest of the main building, about 200 meters away, is the so-called Château dʼIf , a small neo-Gothic building on an island in a small pond. It has a stair tower on its southeast corner . The facade is decorated with panels on which the titles of 88 works by Dumas are engraved. The building served the writer as a work area. It can now be reached via a stone bridge that replaced an earlier drawbridge .

literature

  • Emmanuel Bourassin: Les châteaux dʼIle-de-France. 1st edition. Sélection du Reader's Digest, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-7098-0528-6 , pp. 146-149.
  • Bernard Crochet: Châteaux en Île de de France. Éditions Patrimoines & Médias, Prahecq 2006, ISBN 2-910137-33-3 , pp. 56-57.
  • Alain Decaux : Quand Alexandre dumas construisait le château de Monte Cristo. In: Les monuments historiques de France. No. 1, 1974, ISSN  0027-0768 , pp. 103-105.
  • Antoine Le Bas: Le Port-Marly. Château de Monte-Cristo. In: Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos (ed.): Le Guide du Patrimoine. Ile-de-France. Hachette, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-01-016811-9 , pp. 510-511.
  • Dominique Lesbros: Découvertes insolites around Paris. Parigramme, Paris 2006, ISBN 2-85704-095-4 , pp. 148-149.
  • Georges Poisson : Le chateau de Monte-Cristo et son mécène. In: Sites et Monuments . No. 110, July-September 1985, ISSN  0489-0280 , pp. 13-15 ( digitized ).
  • Georges Poisson: Monte Cristo. In: Vieilles maisons françaises. No. 48, April 1971, ISSN  0049-6316 , pp. 60-62.
  • Pierre-André Touttain: Un rêve de pierre. Le château de Monte Cristo. In: Gazette des beaux-arts. 1971, ISSN  0016-5530 , pp. 77-91.

Web links

Commons : Monte Christo Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Commons : Château dʼIf  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ First entry of the castle in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
  2. ↑ Entry of the castle park in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
  3. ↑ a b Second entry of the castle in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
  4. ↑ a b Castle history on the website of the Société des Amis dʼAlexandre Dumas , accessed on August 31, 2017.
  5. ↑ a b c d Emmanuel Bourassin: Les châteaux dʼIle-de-France. 1994, p. 147.
  6. ↑ Dominique Lesbros: Découvertes insolites near Paris. 2006, p. 148.
  7. ↑ a b c History on the castle website , accessed on August 31, 2017.
  8. ^ Georges Poisson: Le château de Monte-Cristo et son mécène. 1985, p. 14.
  9. ^ A b François Nourissier: Sur la route des maisons dʼécrivains: Alexandre Dumas, Emile Zola, Maurice Materlinck. In: Société des Amis de Vincennes (ed.): Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Vincennes. Volume 62. Société des Amis de Vincennes, Vincennes 2011, p. 33 ( digitized version ).
  10. ↑ Alexandre Dumas' castle is being renovated. In: The press . Edition of November 3, 2015 ( online ).
  11. ↑ Vanessa Yager (Ed.): Ouverts au public. Le guide du patrimoine en France. Editions du Patrimoine, Paris 2002, ISBN 2-85822-683-0 , p. 344.
  12. ^ Antoine Le Bas: Le Port-Marly. Château de Monte-Cristo. 1992, p. 511.

Coordinates: 48 ° 53 ′ 8 ″  N , 2 ° 6 ′ 12 ″  E