Saint-Germain-de-Livet Castle

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Saint-Germain-de-Livet Castle from the northeast

The castle Saint-Germain-de-Livet ( French Château de Saint-Germain-de-Livet ) is a castle complex in the French town of Saint-Germain-de-Livet about six kilometers south of Lisieux in the Calvados department of the Normandy region . The moat of the moated castle is fed by a small tributary of the Touques .

First parts of the castle were in March 1924 as historique monument under monument protection provided. They were followed in 1959, 1963, 1966 and most recently in 2007 by other parts of the building that were also included in the list of monuments .

The entire palace complex has been owned by the City of Lisieux since 1958 and is open to visitors. It is a good example of French aristocratic architecture at the time of the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance , because the viewer can still find defensive elements such as machicolation as well as decorative architectural details without a defensive function on the buildings .

description

The outer

The castle island from the south

The two-winged main castle has buildings from the 15th and 16th centuries and is particularly eye- catching with its light limestone masonry with a checkerboard pattern made of red and green glazed bricks . It stands on a pentagonal island, which defines the irregular floor plan of the complex. To the north of this is the former farmyard from the 16th century. The two wings of the building are connected by a gatehouse on the northeast corner of the castle island . A bridge leads from the small palace garden in the northeast of the island to this building, which is flanked by two slender round towers . The arched gate has a small portico- like porch with Corinthian columns on its outside . To the west of the gateway is a residential building from the late 15th century, the upper floor of which was built in half-timbered construction. On the east side of the gateway there is a stone wing with two storeys, the courtyard side of which has a four-arched gallery in the Italian style on the ground floor . Its four round arches are supported by pillars . On the outer facade, this wing has a frieze to visually separate the floors and an eaves cornice with relief ornamentation . The south corner of the east wing is closed off by a mighty round tower, which has a slate-roofed conical helmet , machicolations and a cornice on stone consoles .

The inner

A visit to the interior of the palace starts in the Gardensaal (French: salle des Gardes ) with its large fireplace and Louis-Treize and Louis-quatorze- style furniture . In addition to a painted wooden beam ceiling, remains of frescoes from the beginning of the 16th century can be seen there. Then you can see the former dining room with Empire furniture made of ebony.

Not only the former castle kitchen can be reached via a large hall , but also the first floor of the building. There is a room with furniture by the French painter Eugène Delacroix , which dates from 1863.

history

The first lords of the Seigneurie Livet known by name came from the Tyrel family and have been palpable since the 12th century. Nicole Tyrel brought the property to her husband Ancel Louvet in the 14th century. The present castle buildings go back to the Tournebu family. A descendant of Nicole and Ancel, Jeanne Louvet , married Pierre de Tournebu in 1462 , making him Seigneur of Livet. In the last quarter of the 15th century he began building a half-timbered house. His descendant Jean de Tournebu and his wife Marguerite de Croismare had a fortified gatehouse with an adjoining stone wing and a well-fortified round tower built in the second half of the 16th century. The two years 1584 and 1588 on the facades of the stone buildings attest to this.

Confiscated during the French Revolution , the castle returned to family ownership after the Revolution. In 1806 Marie de Tournebu , widowed de Janville , owned the property. Despite two marriages, she died childless in 1810, so that her two nieces from the house of Foucault inherited Saint-Germain-de-Livet. In the middle of the 19th century they had part of the complex demolished and the other buildings renovated. In 1879 it was bought by the Gobley family before the plant came to Julien Pillaut in 1920 or 1922 , who was a descendant of the well-known cabinet maker Johann Heinrich Riesener . After the couple Pillaut the castle in the first half of the 20th century was restored let it gave the widow 1957/58 of the city of Lisieux.

literature

  • Jean-Pierre Babelon: Châteaux de France au siècle de la Renaissance . Flammarion, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-08-012062-X , pp. 670-672 .
  • Hélène Couzy: Le Château de Saint-Germain-de-Livet . In: Société française d'archéologie (ed.): Congrès archéologique de France. 132e Session, 1974, Bessin et Pays d'Auge . Self-published, Paris 1978, ISSN  0069-8881 .
  • Claude Frégnac (Ed.): Merveilles des châteaux de Normandie . Hachette, Paris 1966, pp. 276-281.
  • H. Pellerin: Le Château de Saint-Germain-de-Livet . In: Pays d'Auge , No. 11, 1964, pp. 3-7.
  • H. Pellerin: Le Château de Saint-Germain-de-Livet . In: Pays d'Auge , No. 6, 1967, p. 6.
  • Jacques Pougheol: Châteaux et Manoirs de Calvados, Normandy . Art de Basse-Normandie, 1963, Caen 1963, pp. 108-109.
  • Louis Rioult de Neuville: Le Château de Saint-Germain-de-Livet . In: Henri Magron (ed.): La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque, édifices publics, églises, châteaux, manoirs, etc. Volume 2. Lemale & Cie., Le Havre 1895, pp. 129–131.
  • Josiane Sartre: Châteaux "brique et pierre" in France. Essai d'architecture . Nouvelles Éditions Latines , Paris 1981, ISBN 2-7233-0135-4 , pp. 53-54, 83 ( online ).
  • Karine Pires: Saint-Germain-de-Livet. Etude architecturale du château . 1998.
  • Yves Lescroart: Le château de Saint-Germain-de-Livet . In: Bernard Beck, Pierre Bouet, Claire Etienne, Isabelle Lettéron (eds.): L'architecture de la Renaissance en Normandie. Volume 2: Voyage à travers la Normandie du XVIe siècle . Editions Charles Corlet, Condé-sur-Noireau 2004, ISBN 2-84706-145-2 .

Web links

Commons : Saint-Germain-de-Livet Castle  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Castle Saint-Germain-de-Livet in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French), accessed on August 7, 2008.
  2. ^ Normandy. Vallée de la Seine . Michelin, Paris 2008, ISBN 2-06-713906-1 , p. 114 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Werner Meyer: Castle trip of the German Castle Association in Normandy 16. – 21. June 1975 . In: Castles and Palaces . Vol. 16, No. 2, 1975, ISSN  0007-6201 , p. 124.
  4. ↑ J.-P. Babelon: Châteaux de France au siècle de la Renaissance , p. 670.
  5. ↑ informationfrance.com ( Memento of the original dated February 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed August 9, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.informationfrance.com
  6. ↑ a b fleurysien.com , accessed August 9, 2009.
  7. ↑ itinerairesbis.com , accessed August 9, 2009.
  8. ↑ Vanessa Yager (Ed.): Ouverts au public. Monuments historiques: chateaux et abbayes, parcs et jardins, sites industriels et archéologiques édifices du XXe siècle. Le guide du patrimoine en France . Monum, Edition du patrimoine, Paris 2002, ISBN 2-85822-760-8 , p. 500.

Coordinates: 49 ° 5 ′ 20.5 ″  N , 0 ° 12 ′ 52.4 ″  E