Prangins Castle

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Prangins Castle
Main facade with courtyard, in the foreground the English garden of the palace

Main facade with courtyard, in the foreground the English garden of the palace

Creation time : 1732
Conservation status: Receive
Place: Prangins
Geographical location 46 ° 23 '40 "  N , 6 ° 15' 7"  E Coordinates: 46 ° 23 '40 "  N , 6 ° 15' 7"  E ; CH1903:  508728  /  138812
Height: 410  m above sea level M.
Prangins Castle (Canton of Vaud)
Prangins Castle

The Prangins Castle is a Baroque castle in the town of Prangins in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland . It was built on the ruins of an older complex from 1732 by an unknown architect for the French banker Louis Guiguer . Since 1975 it is owned by the Swiss Confederation and houses since 1998 the seat of the Swiss National Museum (SNM) in the Romandie .

history

Prangins Manor and Castle before 1719

The original castle complex on the site of the present castle was the center of a rule in the Middle Ages that stretched from Mont le Vieux to the Pays de Gex . The oldest known owners of the rule were the lords of Cossonay , of whom in 1281 a branch was named after Prangins (→ Prangins (noble family) ). They also owned the city of Nyon as a fief from the Archdiocese of Besançon . Her coat of arms showed a black eagle in gold.

Aymon von Cossonay-Prangins (1267–1306) came into conflict with the rising dynasty of the Counts of Savoy when Count Amadeus V extended his power over Lake Geneva. In June 1293, Aymon lost the city of Nyon and finally had to cede control to Savoy in 1294 in return for a settlement of 50 pounds of silver and a life pension. Following the recognition of the sovereignty of Savoy by the Count and Bishop of Geneva and the Dauphin von Viennois , Savoy ruled the entire region around Lake Geneva.

Amadeus V handed over the rule of Prangins to his brother Louis of Savoy , whom he had appointed as lord of Vaud . The lordship and the castle of Prangins changed hands very often: in 1361 it went to Aymon d'Urtières, 1369 to Iblet de Challant, 1409 to Aymon de Viry, 1428 to Jean de Compois, around 1529 to George de Rive. In 1536, the city of Bern conquered Vaud, and the old Prangins Castle was burned down. The rule of Prangin remained, however, and was subordinated to the Bernese provincial bailiff Nyon. In 1552 the rule passed into the hands of the Bernese Hans von Diesbach , whose inheritance they sold to Emilia von Nassau in 1627 . Later ownership changed hands several times until it was bought by Louis Guiguer in 1719. The rule or French the barony of Prangins at that time roughly comprised the areas of today's parishes of Prangins, Vich and Gland .

History of the modern Prangins Castle

garden
Prangins Castle, aerial view
Dining room
gallery
Corner salon

Louis Guiguer (originally Gyger) was a French banker whose family originally came from Bürglen TG . The Guiguers had made wealth as textile traders in Lyon . With the repeal of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the Guiguers lost part of their fortune, which is probably why Louis Guiguer went into banking with his cousin Jean-Claude Tourton. The "Tourton et Guiguer" bank was very successful and existed until the 19th century. In 1717 Louis Guiguer withdrew from the banking business and in 1723 took over the rule of Prangins. After his reign he called himself Baron Louis Guiguer de Prangins. 1732–1739 he had the new Prangins Castle built by an unknown architect.

His son, Jean-Georges Guiguer de Prangins left the castle to the French philosopher Voltaire as a refuge in the winter of 1754/55 . Later he himself took up residence there with his second wife and had a chapel built into the castle and the gardens extended. His grandson, Charles-Jules Guiguer de Prangins, was actively involved in the liberation of Vaud from Bernese rule in 1798. He made a career in the service of the Helvetic Republic and later in the newly formed Swiss Army . In 1814 he sold the castle to Joseph Bonaparte , Napoleon's older brother and ex-King of Spain.

Joseph Bonaparte had the castle renovated in the summer of 1814, because he was likely to go into longer exile after the fall of his brother. Until Napoleon's return from Elba, Prangins was for a short time a conspiratorial center for the French loyal to the Emperor, until the Swiss Confederation ordered Joseph's arrest, until pressure from the Allies. This escaped the reach of his enemies by fleeing. After Napoleon's fall again, Joseph emigrated to the United States and tried to sell the now neglected Prangins Castle through an agent for a long time.

In 1827 the castle came to Marie-Madleine Gentil-Chavagnac. Their heirs sold the entire domain in 1873. The castle went to the Moravian Brethren , who set up an educational institute for boys and young men in the buildings. The interior of the castle was heavily modified to adapt it to the new use. Another part of the domain, the Bergerie, was bought back in 1859 by Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte (called Prince Plon-Plon ), a son of Joseph Bonaparte's brother Jérôme Bonaparte , who had the Villa de Prangins built there from 1862 , which he However, he sold it again in 1870, after which he had the new Villa La Bergerie built on the remaining part of the domain . This is still owned by the Bonaparte family today .

After 1920, Prangins Castle changed hands several times. It was first bought by Horace de Pourtalès from Geneva and had it converted back into a private residence. In 1929 he had to sell it again to the American Josephine Dexter. Their daughter, Katharine McCormick , signed the castle over to the United States government in 1962, which wanted to establish the residence of their envoy to the UN in Geneva. After Katharine McCormick's death in 1967, the US government sold Prangins to Bernard Cornfeld , who in turn passed the property on to the cantons of Geneva and Vaud for two million francs on July 19, 1974.

In 1975, the cantons of Geneva and Vaud handed over Prangins Castle to the Swiss Confederation in order to set up the French-speaking Swiss National Museum there. Until 1998 the castle was extensively restored and rebuilt and expanded for the new purpose as a museum. In June 1998 the museum was opened on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the state museum. The permanent exhibitions show objects and art from the history of Switzerland in the 18th and 19th centuries.

literature

  • François Christe, Colette Grand and others: Prangins: de la forteresse au Château de Plaisance. 1985-1995: 10 ans de recherches, 3000 ans d'histoire. Cahiers d'archéologie romande, Lausanne 1997, ISBN 2880280710 .
  • Chantal Schoulepnikoff: Le château de Prangins. La demeure historique. Musée national suisse, Zurich 1991, ISBN 3908025214 .
  • Discover history . Swiss National Museum Château de Prangins. o. O. 1998. ISBN 3-908025-81-8
  • Historisch-Biographisches Lexikon der Schweiz , Vol. 5, Neuchâtel 1927, p. 480.
  • Herbert Lüthy : La Banque Protestante en France de la Révocation de l'Edit de Nantes à la Révolution . Paris 1961.
  • Helen Bieri Thomson: Le château de Prangins. (Swiss Art Guide, Series 98, No. 973–974). Ed. Society for Swiss Art History GSK. Bern 2015, ISBN 978-3-03797-221-2 .

Web links

Commons : Château de Prangins  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marco Jorio: Bonaparte. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . March 11, 2010 , accessed July 3, 2019 .