Pierrefonds Castle

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Pierrefonds Castle
Pierrefonds Castle as a ruin around 1860
View from the southwest
Castle courtyard
Guard room
Heroes' Hall

Castle Pierrefonds is a native to the Middle Ages derived palace complex , which in the 19th century by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc for Napoleon III. was reconstructed and expanded as a private residence .

The castle is located in Pierrefonds in the Oise department , on the south-eastern edge of the Compiègne forest north of Paris . It has been under monument protection as Monument historique since 1848 .

history

A fortress is detectable at this point in the 12th century. In 1392 King Charles VI. the county of Valois , to which Pierrefonds belonged, to the duchy and gave it to his brother Louis d'Orléans . From 1393 to 1407 the castle was rebuilt and expanded for the latter. The head of this project was the court architect Jean le Noir .

In March 1617 the castle was besieged and taken by the troops of Cardinal Richelieu . The then lord of the castle François-Annibal d'Estrées , the brother Gabrielles d'Estrées , was a member of a group of dissatisfied French nobles who opposed the young King Louis XIII. rebelled and were led by Henri II. de Bourbon . The castle was then largely, but not completely, destroyed.

The building complex remained in ruins for over 200 years . Napoleon Bonaparte bought it in 1810 for less than 3000 francs . In August 1832, the citizen king Louis Philippe held a banquet here on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter Louise with Leopold I of Belgium . Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot painted the ruin several times between 1834 and 1866.

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who later became Emperor Napoleon III. , visited the castle ruins in 1850. In 1857 he commissioned Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to reconstruct and restore it . In 1861 he expanded the project. An imperial residence was to be created on the basis of the existing ruins. In the summer of 1867, the Bavarian King Ludwig II visited the construction site on the occasion of a stay in Paris to get ideas for his planned new building in Neuschwanstein , after having visited the rebuilt Wartburg two months earlier . Six years after Viollet-le-Duc's death in 1885, the work that had already been carried out by the fall of Napoléon III came to a standstill. Interrupted in 1871.

The listed castle is sometimes used as a backdrop for film recordings, for example for the film The Man in the Iron Mask with Leonardo DiCaprio , and in 2008 and 2010 for the BBC series Merlin - The New Adventure .

literature

  • Amédée Boinet: Le Château de Pierrefonds: Champlieu, Morienval, Saint-Jean-aux-Bois. J. Lanore, Paris 1970.
  • Janine Ducrot: Château de Pierrefonds. Nouvelles Éditions latines, Paris 1983, ISBN 2-7233-0193-1 .
  • Robert Dulau: Le château de Pierrefonds. ISBN 978-2-85822-192-9 .
  • Louis Grodecki : La Restauration du château de Pierrefonds, 1857–1879. 1965.
  • Jacques Harmand: Pierrefonds, la forteresse d'Orléans. Les réalités. Editions Jeanne d'Arc, Le Puy 1983.
  • Jacques Mayor: Pierrefonds le chateau de Louis d'Orléans. Editions artistiques et scientifiques, Versailles [et al.] 1912.
  • Jean Mesqui: Le château de Pierrefonds. Une nouvelle vision du monument . In: Bulletin Monumental. No. 166/3, 2008, ISSN  0007-473X , pp. 197-246 ( PDF ; 3.3 MB).
  • Georges Poisson : Castles of the Ile-de-France. Prestel, Munich 1968, pp. 37-42.
  • Jürgen Strasser: When monarchs play the Middle Ages ... The Pierrefonds and Neuschwanstein castles as reflected in their time. Heinz, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-88099-293-2 .
  • Bernard Thaon: Pierrefonds ou l'impossible jardin. Nouvelles Éditions latines, Paris 1987, ISBN 2-7233-0360-8 .
  • Eugène Viollet-le-Duc: Description of the Château de Pierrefonds. Bance, Paris 1857.

Web links

Commons : Pierrefonds Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Description du château de Pierrefonds  - Sources and full texts (French)

Coordinates: 49 ° 20 ′ 49 ″  N , 2 ° 58 ′ 48 ″  E