Rochefort Castle (Rochefort)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Preserved remainder of the mean risalit from Rochefort Castle

The ruins of Rochefort Castle ( French Château comtal de Rochefort ) are located about 25 kilometers south-east of Dinant in the Belgian province of Namur on an elongated rock plateau above the town of Rochefort in Wallonia . The Castle is a medieval castle back the Montaigu family, then the biggest military facility in the Famenne was. The well-preserved Lavaux-Sainte-Anne Castle is only about ten kilometers as the crow flies to the south-west .

Because of its good strategic location, the complex has been besieged , stormed and captured several times in the course of its history . After members of the zu Stolberg family had converted and expanded the weir system into a representative castle, it was consigned by the French state at the end of the 18th century and sold as national property in 1811. Financial difficulties of the owner meant that the castle was used as a quarry to sell the building material for a profit.

In 1966 individual remains of the wall of the castle ruins were placed under monument protection as a monument , and in 1971 the entire ruin and the castle area were placed under protection as a ground monument . The facility can only be viewed by groups by prior arrangement and as part of a guided tour.

history

Rochefort owes its name to a fortification ( rocha fortis ) that was built on a rock spur by the first lords of Rochefort, the Montaigu family . This complex was first mentioned in a document in 1155, but it probably already existed in the 11th century. In 1147 it came to the von Duras family, through whom it changed hands in 1187 to the von Walcourt family. One of the castle owners from that family founded the Trappist monastery Notre-Dame de Saint-Rémy in 1230 . In the 15th century, the plant changed hands again: Agnès de Rochefort, heir to Jeans III. de Walcourt-Rochefort, became the second wife of Eberhard II of the Mark in 1422 and brought her to his family. When Eberhard II rebelled against the Duke of Burgundy , Philip the Good , he had his possessions attacked and devastated by a band of robbers. The gang had set up their quarters in Rochefort Castle, from where they started their raids. To put an end to the hustle and bustle, troops of the Liège prince-bishop besieged the castle complex in 1445 and severely damaged it. Robbers and lord of the castle were arrested, and Eberhard's son Ludwig I succeeded his father as lord of Rochefort.

After the Seigneurie Rochefort 1494 by the later Emperor Maximilian I to a county had been raised, castle and county in 1544 came to the family of Stolberg, who had for some 30 years before the property in 1574 to the dynasty of Loewenstein-Wertheim came . Two offspring of this family were the most important owners of the castle: Johann Dietrich von Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rochefort (from 1611 to 1644) and his grandson Johann Ernst (from 1701 to 1731), who was Bishop of Tournai and prince of the Imperial Abbey of Stablo-Malmedy . During the war between France and Spain , Spanish soldiers under the command of Latour, a native of Lorraine, attacked the castle on March 21, 1651 and were able to take it. They held it for the next three months. Two years later, Condé's troops led by the Count of Duras tried unsuccessfully in February and June to take the castle. In 1674, imperial troops under the command of the Count of Bucquoy camped temporarily in the castle's farm yard .

Rochefort Castle on a drawing by Remacle Le Loup around 1740

From 1737 the family zu Stolberg was again the owner. She had the medieval castle built into a castle and expanded. Among other things, the large square keep was demolished and a court of honor was created on an artificial terrace. The Stolbergers had the defensive walls of the complex put down or integrated into new buildings. A model of the then new building can be seen in the castle's small museum. However, the facility remained fortified to a certain extent and retained various defense elements for its defense.

The following years remained quiet around Rochefort, before angry citizens of the place stormed the complex in October 1774 and were only beaten back when they tried to penetrate the count's apartments . In 1796 French revolutionary troops marched into Rochefort and occupied the castle, which at that time was looked after by an administrator of the zu Stolberg family. He bought the facility in 1811 after it was confiscated and declared national property. However, he lacked the financial means to maintain the castle in the long term, so that he was forced to demolish the buildings piece by piece and sell their building materials. Via two unmarried female members of the Jacquet family, who bequeathed all of their property to their great-nephew G. de Warzée, the castle ruins were bought by the two notaries Delvigne and Justin Collignon in February 1883. The latter erected the so-called maison carrée , a square brick building in the style of classicism, in place of a former defensive tower . In 1906 the entrepreneur Emile Cousin added an annex in the historicist neo-Gothic style on the site of the former stables , which today - together with the Maison carrée  - is known as the New Castle ( French Château neuf ) or Château Cousin . He had the rest of the area around the ruins redesigned into a romantic park .

The Château neuf

Descendants of cousins ​​sold the facility in 1971 to the Ministry of Education ( Ministère de l'Education nationale ), which then ran a boarding school in the New Castle . From 1976 excavations took place on the palace area , which unearthed the foundations of the keep and the 50 meter deep castle well, among other things at the highest point of the plateau. In 1978 the ministry transferred the castle ruins to the French community . In the period from 1982 to 1989, security and maintenance measures were carried out on the remains of the existing building, the cost of which was the equivalent of around 500,000 euros. From 1987 the ruins were managed by the Les Amis du Château Comtal de Rochefort association, which opened them to the public in July of that year. Since then, the facility has recorded up to 25,000 visitors a year. Further excavations took place from the summer of 1991. Plans to buy the castle through the municipality of Rochefort were not implemented. Instead, married André Querton and Charlotte Lhoist, a great-granddaughter of the former owner, Emile Cousin, bought it in 2005. The couple had the New Palace converted into a convalescent home for sick children from summer 2008, which began operations in 2010.

description

The formerly extensive palace complex is only rudimentary today. The most noticeable remnant from afar is the mean risalit of the lodging . This preserved piece of masonry consists of limestone blocks . An open staircase made of sawn bluestone leads up to its arched portal , which is flanked by two Tuscan pilasters . Another storey of the former round tower on a north-east corner is also still reasonably well preserved . The rough stone blocks of its masonry and its barrel vault indicate that it was built in the Middle Ages, but there is not enough original building material to date it reliably.

Drawings by the Belgian artist Remacle Le Loup from around 1740 show how the palace complex looked after its remodeling in the 18th century. Accordingly, it consisted of a high castle and adjoining farm buildings. The two-storey logis had eleven axes, of which the three in the middle were in a central projection with a triangular gable . Two very short side wings joined the logis at right angles at its northeast and southwest ends and together with it delimited a courtyard of honor. The building complex was flanked by several round towers with baroque domes and lanterns and stood on an artificially created plateau supported by massive limestone walls with arcades . Eight of these round arches are still preserved. The main castle was bordered to the north-east by a two-storey, but lower utility wing, which was about the same length as the lodging . There were barns , stables for livestock and the stables , among other things . A ramp-like driveway led along the symmetrical gardens based on the French model to the farm yard , which had to be crossed to get to the main castle.

literature

  • Luc Francis Genicot (Ed.): Le grand livre des châteaux de Belgique . Volume 1. Vokaer, Brussels 1975, p. 210.
  • Christian Limbrée, Robert Lambert: La mise en valeur des ruine du château comtal de Rochefort. Une operation intégrée . September 2008 ( PDF ; 490 kB).

Web links

Commons : Rochefort Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ↑ a b Website of the Lessetal Tourism Association , accessed on August 18, 2012.
  2. ↑ a b c d C. Limbrée, R. Lambert: La mise en valeur des ruine du château comtal de Rochefort , p. 1.
  3. ↑ Les Amis du Château Comtal de Rochefort (ed.): The Castle of the Counts of Rochefort . Information sheet. Les Amis du Château Comtal de Rochefort, undated, undated
  4. ↑ a b L. F. Genicot: Le grand livre des châteaux de Belgique , p. 210.
  5. ↑ Michel Hubert: L'organization militiare de Dinant à travers les siècles , accessed on August 18, 2012.
  6. ↑ a b c d history of the castle , accessed on August 18, 2012.
  7. ↑ Other publications mention 1734 and 1735 as the year of the change of ownership.
  8. ↑ List of owners on eix.be , accessed on August 18, 2012.
  9. ↑ The information in the various publications fluctuates between 1904 and 1906.
  10. ↑ a b eix.be , accessed on August 18, 2012.
  11. ↑ a b Emmanuel Wilputte: Rochefort: un château pour les enfants malades . In: Vers l'Avenir . October 30, 2009, p. 1 ( online ).
  12. ↑ C. Limbrée, R. Lambert: La mise en valeur des ruine du château comtal de Rochefort , p. 3.

Coordinates: 50 ° 9 '17.9 "  N , 5 ° 13' 14.3"  E