Sully Castle
The Sully Castle is a moated castle in Burgundy Place Sully , Saône-et-Loire , about 14 kilometers northeast of Autun on the left bank of Drée .
Built from the middle of the 16th century on the foundations of a previous medieval complex, it is the largest Renaissance castle in southern Burgundy. The French author Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné referred to it in one of her letters as " Fontainebleau Burgundy" ( French "Fontainebleau de Bourgogne" ).
Since 4 July 1995, the stands Castle as a monument historique under monument protection .
description
Sully Castle is a closed four-wing building with farm buildings to the west. The castle island is surrounded by a moat that is fed by the Drée, a tributary of the Arroux . The castle is surrounded by a 25 hectare castle park in the English landscape style , in which there is a statue of Marshal Patrice de Mac-Mahon , which used to be in Algiers .
architecture
Farm buildings
To the west of the main castle is a large, lawn-covered forecourt, which is flanked to the north and south by former farm buildings from the 17th century. Some buildings in the north served as horse stables earlier, which is documented by a horse sculpture above the central entrance. In another building to the north is a theater from 1840.
Main castle
The main castle rises on an almost square floor plan. Its four wings are bordered by four corner towers with a tent roof , a small viewing platform and a lantern . Its rustic basement was built from massive humpback blocks. Two more floors rise above it, the upper one with Ionic pilasters . The corner towers may still come from the predecessor of today's castle.
The portal is in the west facade. It is crowned by a triangular gable showing two Moors who used to hold the coat of arms of the Morey family. Today the latter has been replaced by a clock.
The outer facade of the south wing dates from 1923 and is in the neo-renaissance style. It has two tourelles that frame a central tower. In this is the castle chapel in the neo-Gothic style .
The eastern wing was redesigned in the 19th century, but still contains the fabric of a previous building from the 15th century and has a fronton from the 18th century on its outside.
The northern outside is dominated by a monumental flight of stairs , which leads to a large garden terrace in front with a baluster railing . The facade of the building wing dates from the beginning of the 18th century and has a three-axis central projection with a fronton.
The facades of the 39.8 × 36.10 meter inner courtyard, which is reminiscent of the Ancy-le-Franc Castle , are designed much more uniformly and date from the end of the 16th to the beginning of the 17th century. Their architectural decoration is much more elaborate than that of the external facades. The east wing has a central pavilion that protrudes from the facade towards the courtyard.
Hardly anything has been preserved of the original interior of the castle due to numerous alterations and redesigns. Exceptions to this are the stairwell in the south wing, the current state of which dates from the time of Louis XV. and a richly carved wooden ceiling above the gallery in the palace chapel.
Park and garden
The castle's English landscaped garden dates from the 19th century and is criss-crossed by numerous moats. In its eastern part there is a large water basin, in its south-eastern part there is a chapel from the end of the 12th or beginning of the 13th century, which serves as the burial place of today's lords of the castle. The most valuable trees in the park are several hundred year old trees such as oaks , plane trees , tulip trees and American nut trees.
Behind the southern farm building there is a symmetrically laid out, restored vegetable garden, which is lined with fruit trees. With its geometric planting, it is a typical kitchen garden from the Renaissance period. His harvest is sold in the castle's own shop. The garden includes an arbor , a pigeon tower and a fish pond.
history
The beginnings in the Middle Ages
Sully belonged to the Sully house in the High Middle Ages . Gauthier de Sully built a fortified castle with eight corner towers, moats and a drawbridge in the 12th century . A tower and some foundation walls are still preserved today. When the Sully family died out in the mid-13th century, it was inherited by a branch of the lords of Couches , the Bauffremont family. At the end of the 13th century, Marie de Bauffremont married Etienne I de Bourgogne-Montagu and brought both the manor and the castle into the marriage. Sully remained in the family's possession for more than 150 years. When their last male representative, Claude de Montaigu , died in the Battle of Buxy in 1471 , he was heir to his only daughter Jeanne , who had married Hugues de Rabutin, Seigneur von Épiry in 1461 . However, Claude de Montaigue transferred Sully Castle to his daughter's husband two years before his death on December 20, 1469. The Rabutins had the old one-wing complex extended by three more wings in the 15th century.
New building in the Renaissance
Christophe de Rabutin sold the property to Jean de Saulx in 1515. His son, Marshal Gaspard de Saulx-Tavannes , had the old buildings laid down and around 1570 the construction of a new castle in the Renaissance style began on the foundations of the old complex. The plans for this are attributed to Nicolas Ribonnier , even if there is no documentary evidence that he was the architect of the palace. However, since he also built La Pailly Castle for the family , he is at least likely as an architect for Sully. After the Marshal's death in 1573, his widow Françoise de La Beaume de Montrevel continued the new building. The work was only finally completed under their third son Jean between 1616 and 1621. He retired to Sully in 1595 and wrote his memoirs there in the first quarter of the 17th century. His son Henri succeeded him as the castle owner and offered his relatives Anne de Gonzague temporary shelter in his castle when they had to leave the French court due to the conspiracy of their lover, Henri II. De Lorraine , the Duke of Guise .
Henri-Charles de Saulx sold the castle to Claude de Morey, marquis de Vianges in 1714. The Moreys had the north exterior facade and the large garden terrace redesigned by the architect Franck.
The Mac-Mahons as lords of the castle
Charlotte Le Belin, widow and heiress of Jean-Baptistes de Morey, who died in 1748, was her second marriage to Jean-Baptiste Mac-Mahon d'Eguilly and brought Sully Castle with her into this marriage. It is still owned by the Mac-Mahons today. In 1808 the second President of the Third French Republic , Patrice de Mac-Mahon , first Duke of Magenta, was born there and baptized in the old castle chapel.
During the French Revolution , the castle only escaped destruction through the cunning of its keeper. When revolutionaries wanted to tear down the building, the 80-year-old Marquise Charlotte de Mac-Mahon stood in their way. The revolutionaries left without having achieved anything and wanted to come back after the death of the lady of the castle, who in their opinion would not be long in coming. When the news of Charlotte's death made the rounds six months later, the revolutionaries went to the palace again. There, however, the castle administrator informed her that the marquise was still alive, which was a big lie. By the time the ruse was exposed, however, the revolution was over.
After the outside staircase had been built in 1850, Marte de Vogüé, wife of Charles-Marie de Mac-Mahon, had numerous restorations and repairs carried out on the castle during the 19th century. It is thanks to her, for example, that the south facade was redesigned according to plans by Dutoit, a pupil of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc , and the old moat was reopened in 1683. Further changes during the 19th century were the reworking of the eastern outer facade, the demolition of the eastern bridge over the castle moat and the fundamental redesign of the interior as well as the reworking of the castle chapel in the neo-Gothic style. The present palace park was laid out in 1890.
The most recent repair work on the castle was the restoration of the large terrace in 2007.
Todays use
Part of the castle is now used as the residence of the Mac-Mahon family, the other part serves as the castle museum, which can be visited on guided tours for a fee between March and November. You can see its magnificent interior and furniture in the style of the 18th and 19th centuries. The park and garden are also open to visitors during the same period. Every year around 18,000 tourists visit the facility.
Some rooms can be rented for private celebrations, conferences and exhibitions.
literature
- Jean-Pierre Babelon: Châteaux de France au siècle de la Renaissance . Flammarion, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-08-012062-X , pp. 632-635 .
- Claude Frégnac Merveilles des châteaux de Bourgogne et de Franche-Comté . Hachette, Paris 1969, pp. 176-181.
- Denis Grivot: Le château de Sully (Saône-et-Loire) . Lescuyer, Lyon 1970.
- Marianne Métais: Un château Renaissance au XIXe siècle. The restaurations du château de Sully (Saône-et-Loire) . Paris 2007.
- Françoise Vignier: Bourgogne. Nivernais (= Dictionnaire des châteaux de France. Volume 9). Berger-Levrault, Paris 1980, ISBN 2-7013-0363-X , pp. 299-300.
- 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. 145.
- Burgundy - Jura. From famous wines, colorfully patterned roofs and fairytale forest landscapes . 1st edition. Travel-House-Media, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-8342-8991-9 , pp. 91-92 ( digitized version ).
- Saône-et-Loire. Bourgogne du Sud . Petit Futé, 2005, ISBN 2-7469-1365-8 , p. 71 ( digitized version ).
Web links
- Site of the castle
- Photos from Base Mémoire
- Aerial view
- Sully Castle as a 3D model in SketchUp's 3D warehouse
Individual evidence
- ↑ Quoted from Michelin. Bourgogne. P. 118.
- ↑ a b Sully Castle in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French), accessed on August 12, 2008.
- ↑ a b J.-P. Babelon: Châteaux de France au siècle de la Renaissance. 1989, p. 634.
- ^ Claude Sauvageot: Palais, châteaux, hôtels et maisons de France du XVe au XVIIIe siècle. Volume 1. Morel, Paris 1867, p. 17 ( digitized version ).
- ↑ a b c macmahon.isasite.net , accessed August 12, 2008.
- ^ A b Roland Niaux: Histoire et Archeologie en Morvan et Bourgogne. Sully , accessed September 5, 2015.
- ^ F. Vignier: Bourgogne. Nivernais. 1980, p. 299.
- ↑ Saône-et-Loire. Bourgogne du Sud. 2005, p. 71.
- ↑ cestenfrance.net , accessed on 12 August, 2008.
- ↑ travel-mag.de ( Memento of the original from June 13, 2008 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 12, 2008.
Coordinates: 47 ° 0 ′ 39 ″ N , 4 ° 28 ′ 24.5 ″ E