Saint-Germain-en-Laye Castle
The castle Saint-Germain-en-Laye [ sɛ̃ ʒɛʁmɛ̃ ɑ̃ lɛ ] is a castle complex in the French city of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the Yvelines department , about 19 kilometers west of Paris . From its construction as a castle in the 13th century, it served as the residence of the French kings until the 17th century, before Louis XIV moved with his court to Versailles in 1682 .
Registered as a Monument historique since 1862, it now houses the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale .
description
The palace complex rises on a hill along the Seine . It consists of the so-called Château vieux (German: Old Castle ), a few remains of the Château neuf (German: New Castle ) and a baroque garden , which is joined by the Forêt Domanial de Saint-Germain-en-Laye . With 3533 hectares, this is the second largest forest area in Yvelines.
Château vieux
The Renaissance- style Château vieux has an irregular, pentagonal floor plan and is surrounded by a wide, drained moat. Limestone blocks and brick were used as building materials . Its roof is covered with slate shingles and in some places has Italian decorative forms such as terraces and balustrades .
The three-storey wings of the building enclose an inner courtyard with round stair towers in three of its corners. The north-western corner of the castle is formed by a square donjon from the 13th century, which was structurally integrated into the later building. It is joined to the east by the Chapelle Saint Louis , a Gothic chapel that contains the oldest building structure in the complex. It has a floor plan measuring 24 x 10 meters and is 17 meters high under its vault , which is supported by narrow columns .
The royal family's apartments used to be on the first floor of the Château vieux . The king's apartments were in the eastern part of the north wing. Adjacent to them were the Queen's rooms, which were housed in the northern part of the east wing. The rooms of the princes and princesses were in the south wing of the palace.
The west wing has one of the largest rooms in the palace: the ballroom, known today as the Salle de Mars . It has a footprint of around 40 x 12 meters. At its northern end there is a monumental fireplace made of red bricks with the emblem of Franz I , the salamander.
Château neuf
The Château neuf was a second palace and garden complex in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, built east of the Château vieux by order of Henry II and enlarged under Henry IV . The Duke of Artois, future King Charles X , had it demolished in 1777, but later, due to a lack of financial means, decided not to start the new building planned at the time. Only the top garden terrace with its retaining wall, the artificial grottoes embedded in this wall and the small so-called pavilion Henri IV are all that remains of the Château neuf .
The pavilion Henri IV , an early classical Baroque style with Eckquaderung and polygonal hood executed small brick, previously housed the lower level one of the aforementioned, configured with shell work caves, in the upper, the former oratory Henry IV. A contractor called Planté bought the bad very The pavilion, which has been in the state of the art and has been used as a residential building since 1825, had to sell it again when it went bankrupt, together with the neo-classical building that was now seamlessly attached to it. The next owner was the Compagnie des chemins de fer de l'ouest . Today there is an upscale hotel and restaurant in the pavilion and the adjacent building.
The so-called Pavillon de la Reine , sometimes incorrectly referred to as Château neuf , was not built until the 19th century. The building got its name from a former pavilion of the same name, which stood in this place until the 18th century. Some remains of the former castle can still be found on the site belonging to the building.
Beneath him to the east is the de Sully Pavilion . The building was acquired in 1851 by Joseph Victor Ferdinand Sénateur Goupil, an ancestor of the collector Eugène Goupil and the artist Jean Charlot . From 1853 he grew agave plants imported from the area of the former Tacuba . The pavilion served as a gardener's house for a long time and only incorrectly bears its current name.
Park and gardens
The palace gardens are based on plans by the French landscape designer André Le Nôtre from the 17th century. The former gardens of the Château neuf, which have several lavishly designed terraces facing the Seine, have now completely disappeared.
To the north of the Château vieux are three garden parterres in the baroque style. The western grand parterre , together with a long avenue adjoining it to the north, forms one of today's three axes of the facility. The so-called Jardin de la Dauphine , which was formerly called Boulingrin , forms the eastern part of the baroque gardens . It is a symmetrical garden with avenues of lime trees. The Parterre en bials forms a transition from the Grand parterre to the Jardin de la Dauphine .
The Jardin de la Dauphine ends in the east at the Petite Terrasse , a 500-meter-long terrace without vegetation facing the Seine, which is closed off in the north by a roundabout . This is followed by the 2.2 kilometers long and 35 meters wide Grande Terrasse in a north-easterly direction . The terrace, which was planted with lawns and only a few years ago with young linden trees, has a wrought-iron railing on the Seine side, which was installed there between 1857 and 1871. The Grande Terrasse offers the visitor a view over the Seine valley to Paris. In the north it ends again in a roundabout, which is, however, surrounded by an octagonal wall and is therefore called an octagon . West of the Grande Terrasse is part of the Forêt Domanial de Saint-Germain-en-Laye , also known as the Petit Parc . Its southernmost part, about three hectares in size, which borders the baroque garden parterres, is designed as an English landscape garden.
history
The beginnings
Louis VI. had a first fortified castle built on this site around 1122, which was first mentioned in 1124 under the name Grand Châtelet . King Philippe Auguste had a first chapel built in the area enclosed by a curtain wall in 1223, but there are no traces of it today.
Louis the Saint expanded the complex with the so-called Petit Châtelet and a chapel, which is now called Chapelle Saint Louis after its builder . It was built between 1230 and 1238. The builder of the chapel is believed to be Pierre de Montreuil because of its architectural similarities to the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris .
During the Hundred Years War the castle fell into the hands of English troops under the leadership of the Black Prince, Edward of Woodstock . He had the facility burned down on August 15, 1346. Only the chapel was spared from the fire. Charles V then had the ruins removed and a new castle built on its foundations from 1364 to 1367, the shape of which traced the course of the former curtain wall. The architect in charge of the reconstruction was Raymond du Temple . After the buildings were erected, they were secured with a wide moat. In the square donjon that formed the southwest corner of the complex, Charles V set up his royal study.
Conversion of the Château vieux
After the castle complex was again occupied by English troops in 1420 and recaptured for the French by the Connétable de Richemont in 1440 , it was in a dilapidated state. King Francis I had the battered buildings restored during his reign and converted into a palace in the Renaissance style. The lead builder for the work, which took place from September 1539 to 1549, was initially Pierre Chambiges , according to whose plans the building was increased by two floors. After his death in 1544, the work continued under Chambiges' son-in-law Guillaume Guillain and Jean Langlois. Franz I did not see the completion of the renovation. At the time of his death, the castle's ballroom (now called Salle du Mars ) was still missing the roof. The renovation work only came to an end under Franz's successor, Heinrich II . The hall was inaugurated on May 19, 1549 at a banquet held by Heinrich II on the occasion of the baptism of his son Ludwig. But the event was probably not a lucky star, because Ludwig died only a few months later in 1550, and Heinrich had the ballroom converted into a theater, which was then called Salle de Comédies .
Construction of the Château neuf
Henry II not only completed the project of his predecessor, but also started his own ambitious building project in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. On February 11, 1556, the architect Philibert de l'Orme signed a contract to build a new castle east of the previous complex. The building would later go down in history under the name of Château neuf . De l'Orme built a square and symmetrically designed pavilion from 1557 to 1559, which was called Maison du Théâtre et de Baignerie . This became the central structure of a castle, which took on enormous proportions through constant expansion.
While the Château neuf grew steadily, the old castle complex - from then on called Château vieux - was completed. In 1559 it had a total area of around 8,000 square meters on its several floors. These included 55 apartments, the Salle de Mars , seven chapels, a kitchen and a prison, which was located in the basement of the old donjon.
The expansion of the Château neuf was interrupted with the death of Henry II. The construction work did not continue until 1567 under the direction of the architect Francesco Primaticcio , also known as Le Primatice . In 1570 the Peace of Saint-Germain was concluded in the castle and officially ended the Third Huguenot War . From that year, under the direction of the landscape architect Étienne Dupérac and the gardener Claude Mollet, terraced gardens were laid out east of the Château neuf . Its elaboration and the size of the terraces, which reached down to the Seine, made the Château neuf known throughout France. Three large and several small terrace gardens were connected by stairs and / or ramps. The so-called grottos , which were designed by the two Florentine engineers Tommaso Francini and his brother Alessandro, were particularly popular . They were cave-like, artificially bricked niches in which small fountains or stone statues of gods stood and automatons , i.e. H. artificial people driven by water pressure like the organ-playing Demoiselle in the Grotte des Orgues (grotto of the organs). The lowest garden terrace, almost directly bordering the Seine, was about 219 × 161 meters in size. The central terrace above was approximately 219 x 97 meters, while the upper terrace - divided into three parts - was 78 meters deep and almost 350 meters long. Work on the baroque garden terraces was completed around 1603 under Henry IV , although it is still unclear whether the lowest terrace was ever completely designed. Once completed, the gardens also included four pavilions: the Pavillon du Roi , the Pavillon de la Reine , the Pavillon d'Henri IV and the Pavillon de Sully . The architectural work on the new main castle, begun by Delorme and continued by Primaticcio, was completed by Louis Métezeau and Baptiste Androuet du Cerceau after Primaticcio's death in 1570 .
The Golden age
After the death of Louis XIII. the Château neuf was no longer used and gradually fell into disrepair. It was not until Louis XIV , who was born there and baptized in the Chapelle Saint Louis , that court life returned to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He made the Old Palace his main residence from 1661 to 1682, while the New Palace served as accommodation for his brother, Philippe I. d'Orléans , as well as guests and courtiers. The Château neuf was structurally in very bad condition during Ludwig's reign. In 1660 one of the retaining walls of the terrace gardens had collapsed and two of the terraces had been partially destroyed. Since Ludwig's heart was once more attached to the Château vieux , he left the new castle to its fate and instead commissioned the renovation of the apartments in the Château vieux , having initiated the construction of the Grand Parterre in 1663 . In the period from 1664 to 1690, the king spent a total of 6,485,562 livres on repairs and improvements to the building.
Following the renovation of the interior, Louis XIV had the Grande Terrasse laid out by André Le Nôtre . The work lasted essentially until 1672, although it was not completely finished that year. The Grande Terrasse connected the Château neuf with the Château du Val , a hunting lodge in the Petit Parc built in 1674 according to plans by Jules Hardouin-Mansart . In 1680 Ludwig also had another garden ground floor , the so-called Boulingrin , a large area planted with lawn and box trees.
The court of the Sun King was - due to its absolutist politics - larger than that of its predecessors, and since the chateau neuf was no longer used as a residence, the château vieux was too small to accommodate all the courtiers. Louis XIV therefore commissioned his court architect Hardouin-Mansart to expand the old building complex. From 1682 to 1684 he provided the five corners of the palace with rectangular pavilions, which provided plenty of space for further apartments on their four floors above ground, but these conversions were actually no longer necessary at that time, because the French royal court was already in place in May 1682 moved to the pompous Palace of Versailles.
The castle stood empty until 1690 when it became a royal residence again that year. However, it was not a French king who in the premises Logis moved, but the deposed king of England, Scotland and Ireland, James II. Which together with his second wife, d'Maria Beatrice Este to Saint-Germain-en-Laye to Exile had to flee. The two were the last royal couple to inhabit the castle. James II spent 13 years there before he died in September 1701. In 1692 his youngest daughter Louisa Maria was born there . Maria Beatrice d'Este died there in 1718, and the complex remained unused for many years.
Decline and changing uses
Louis XVI gave the dilapidated Château neuf in 1777 to his brother Karl, the then Count of Artois and later King Karl X. He had the complex demolished until 1782 because he wanted to build a new castle there based on the plans of François-Joseph Bélanger . But this project was never realized. The Château neuf was also not the only building to be abandoned in the second half of the 18th century; the farm buildings in the outer bailey of Château vieux , a large three-wing complex directly to the west of the castle, was also demolished at that time.
The boulingrin needed a lot of care due to its planting and was therefore very expensive to maintain. To save costs, a chestnut grove called Quinconce was planted on its territory in the 18th century . The baroque terraced gardens of the Château neuf , formerly famous throughout France, have also been converted into easy-care lawns.
During the French Revolution , the castle was confiscated by the state and served as a prison from 1793, in which Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle , among others , was held during the Terreurs . During the consulate , the castle served as a hospital before Napoleon Bonaparte established a cavalry school there on October 5, 1809 during the First Empire . But since this 1815 by Louis XVIII. was moved to Saumur , the castle buildings served as barracks during the restoration ; first for British troops who occupied Saint-Germain-en-Laye after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and then for the French army, which used it as a military prison from June 28, 1835 to 1855.
In 1845 Saint-Germain-en-Laye was connected to Paris by a railway line. Without taking the existing landscape into account, tracks were laid through the Petit Parc and a train station was built in the area of the Grand Parterre . The station building was demolished again at the beginning of the 1970s and the ground floor was restored, but the tracks still cut the Petit Parc today .
The property was sold in small parts to various private investors in the first half of the 19th century. In 1837 the entrepreneur Barthelemy Plante acquired the still existing Pavillon d'Henri IV . He owned the neighboring new building in which he ran a hotel-restaurant of the same name. The building of the Pavillon de la Reine was bought by the Marquis de Bléancourt in 1829. He had the property restored.
Use as a museum
On the occasion of a visit by Queen Victoria , who visited the castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the burial place of her predecessor James II. In August 1855, the complex was pulled back from oblivion and the question of its further use arose. Napoleon III three proposals were made. The first proposed setting up a polytechnic school in the castle, while the second suggested the use of the building as a state administrative center. Napoleon III decided on the third suggestion made: the establishment of a Musée des Antiquités celtiques et gallo-romaines .
Eugène Millet , a student of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc , was commissioned in 1862 to convert the old system into a museum. Millet decided to demolish additions and extensions and to restore the building to the 17th century condition based on drawings by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau and Israël Silvestre . At the same time as the first construction work, the baroque garden north of the Château vieux and the adjoining park were restored and made accessible to the public from 1862 to 1864 . The museum was officially inaugurated on the occasion of the Paris World Exhibition on May 12, 1867, although the renovation and restoration work continued until 1907 and was only completed under Honoré Daumet .
In 1902 Leopold Dreyfus acquired the Pavillon de la Reine and had the current building erected on its site by the architect Stephen Sauvestre before 1907 .
In 1919, after the First World War , the palace complex was once again the scene of a memorable peace treaty, the Treaty of Saint-Germain between Austria and the Allies.
The last construction work on the castle so far took place from 1962 onwards under the direction of Minister of Culture André Malraux , who led the renovation work to reorganize the museum exhibition. They found their official conclusion in April 1976 with the inauguration of the new museum rooms. From 1975 restoration measures were also carried out on the baroque gardens and the park of the palace, which found an unexpected continuation from 1999. A heavy storm that year damaged and uprooted many of the chestnut trees planted in the 18th century in the Jardins de la Dauphine . This extensive damage was the decisive factor in the plan to restore the garden and thereby restore its 17th-century baroque state. In the course of the first work, the chestnut trees were replaced by today's linden trees.
literature
- Jacques Androuet du Cerceau : Les plus excellents bastiments de France . Volume 1. L'Aventurine, Paris 1995, ISBN 2-84190-011-8 , pp. 94-101 ( online ).
- Jean-Pierre Babelon: Châteaux de France au siècle de la Renaissance . Flammarion, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-08-012062-X , pp. 318-323, 444-445 .
- Monique Chatenet: Une demeure royale au milieu du XVIe siècle. La distribution des espaces au château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye . In: Revue de l'Art . Vol. 81, No. 1, 1988, ISSN 1953-812X , pp. 20-30 ( PDF ; 12.3 MB).
- Gérard Denizeau: Châteaux . 2nd Edition. Larousse, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-03-583965-7 , pp. 232-235.
- Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos: Le guide du Patrimoine. Ile-de-France . Hachette, Paris 1988, ISBN 2-01-016811-9 , pp. 591-602.
- Georges Poisson : Castles of the Ile-de-France . Prestel, Munich 1968, pp. 220-253.
Web links
- Dossiers from Base Mérimée on Château vieux , Château neuf and the ensemble as a whole (French)
- Images from Base Mémoire
- Detailed history of the Château vieux ( memento of February 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) and of the Château neuf ( memento of April 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (French)
- Information about the Grande Terrasse (French)
- Website of the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale (French)
- Saint-Germain-en-Laye Castle. In: Structurae (French)
- Saint-Germain-en-Laye Castle as a 3D model in SketchUp's 3D warehouse
References and comments
- ^ Entry of the Château neuf in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French), accessed on December 22nd.
- ↑ Family background Jean Goupil (English), access on 19 July 2012 found.
- ↑ Information about the chapel on st-germain.eu ( Memento from March 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ G. Poisson: Castles of the Ile-de-France , p. 221.
- ↑ J.-P. Babelon: Châteaux de France au siècle de la Renaissance , p. 318.
- ↑ The portrait of the Chasteaux Royaux de Sainct Germain en Laye , an engraving from 1614 after a drawing by Alessandro Francini, engraved by Michel Lasne, gives an impression of the size of the gardens
- ↑ Jean Jacques Bourasse: Residences royales et impériales de France. History and monuments . Alfred Mame, Tours 1864, p. 193 ( online ).
- ↑ Grotto in Château-Neuf : La Demoiselle qui joue des orgues.
- ↑ Size information according to st-germain.eu ( Memento from April 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ st-germain.eu ( Memento from April 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Naming after the dossier on Château neuf from Base Mérimée .
- ↑ richesheures.net , accessed July 20, 2012.
- ^ G. Poisson: Castles of the Ile-de-France , p. 245.
- ↑ G. Poisson: Castles of the Ile-de-France , p. 252.
- ↑ lenotre.culture.gouv.fr , accessed July 20, 2012.
- ↑ Dossier on the Château neuf from Base Mérimée , p. 2.
Coordinates: 48 ° 53 '53 " N , 2 ° 5' 47" E