Talcy Castle
The Talcy Castle stands in the same French city Talcy in Loir-et-Cher region Center-Val de Loire . About 20 kilometers northeast of Blois and thus on the outer edge of the Loire Valley in the fertile Beauce , it is one of the Loire castles .
The outwardly simple and very austere castle was established in August 1908 as historique monument under monument protection provided and is less well known for its architecture but also its residents. Two beautiful daughters of the Salviati family went down in literary history as muses of the writers Pierre de Ronsard and Théodore Agrippa d'Aubigné : Cassandre Salviati and her niece Diane.
The almost completely preserved interior of the castle with furniture from the 17th and 18th centuries and its restored baroque garden can be viewed for a fee.
description
The palace complex consists of two building complexes: the stately residential buildings, which are grouped around the so-called palace courtyard, and several economic buildings to the north of it, which enclose the so-called farmyard. To the north of it are a baroque garden and the remains of a castle park . The entire system is divided lengthways by an axis about 500 meters long. It begins with an avenue that runs towards the castle portal from the south , crosses both inner courtyards as a paved path, continues in the gardens and ends at the northern edge of the wooded park.
architecture
The castle was built during the Renaissance , but gives the impression that it comes from the late Middle Ages . It is kept very simple and has several well-fortified components, which were only attached for decorative purposes. The typical stylistic devices of the Renaissance such as pilasters , ornamented friezes or sculpted arabesques are missing . In this respect, the rustic country castle has a strong resemblance to the Fougères-sur-Bièvre castle , which at first glance also looks more like a castle than a chateau.
The palace area can be entered via the donjon with a high hipped roof , which also functions as a gate tower . Its three storeys rise on a square floor plan. Its ground floor, made of natural stone ashlar, has two entrances: a small gate for pedestrians and a large, arched gate entrance , which in the past could be blocked from the inside with a transverse wooden beam. The support holes for this are still available in the wall on both sides of the gate. At the two outside corners the donjon has two hexagonal towers with polygonal helmets . Their upper floors were made of red brick with light-colored corner blocks. They are connected to each other by a covered battlement with battlements running around the third floor . This is carried by projecting consoles and has machicolations in the area above the entrances . Today the outer facade has windows of different types and sizes. In the past, the first two upper floors each had a central window with a window cross , which was flanked on its sides by two further windows. The central window of the first donjon floor is now walled up. For this the two side windows have been enlarged considerably. On the second floor, one of the two side windows was replaced by a narrower version.
On the courtyard side at the northeast corner of the donjon there is an octagonal stair tower with a spiral staircase inside, the construction of which remained unfinished. Its polygonal slate roof has a lantern at the top .
To the east of the donjon is a rectangular residential wing, which together with the courtyard-side stair tower had a similar-looking counterpart on the west side of the donjon until a fire in the 16th century. But after this wing burned down due to an accident, it was not rebuilt. Only a few remains of the wall remain from this building. The south wing has a simple gallery with a beamed ceiling on the ground floor side of the courtyard . Its four flat arched arcades are supported by octagonal pillars with Gothic bases . The top floor of the building tract has two simple gable on triangular.
The east wing of the palace, also used for residential purposes and dating from the 16th century, adjoins the south wing at right angles and, with this and the donjon, delimits the palace courtyard. In this there is a round water basin from 1814 as well as a draw well with a slate roof supported by three pillars. At its northern end, the east wing adjoins the former castle chapel , which is now the parish church of the village.
Behind the northern boundary wall of the castle courtyard are the former farm buildings of the complex around the walnut-lined farm yard. In addition to a horse pond there is a still functional wine press from 1640 in an old barn . The special attraction of the farm, however, is its pigeon house from the 16th century in the form of a large round tower . It is one of the few surviving specimens of its kind. Because the keeping and breeding of pigeons has been a privilege of the nobility since the Middle Ages , many pigeon houses were destroyed as a hated symbol of noble privileges during the French Revolution . The tower has a diameter of more than nine meters and has around 1500 nesting holes inside. Two portholes in its conical roof served as entrances and exits for the pigeons.
Interior
Despite its unspectacular architecture, Talcy Castle is a popular excursion destination because it has an almost completely preserved interior with furniture, some of which date from the 17th and 18th centuries. In their entirety, they convey a vivid picture of manorial life in the 18th and 19th centuries. The rooms are more dignified than luxurious, and the architectural interior makes a very rustic, simple impression.
The garden room on the ground floor of the south wing has a beamed ceiling and a honeycomb tiled floor. His chimney with remains of old painting dates from the first quarter of the 16th century. Is eye-catching there a rare Mille Fleurs -Wandbehang from the 15th century.
The architecture of the castle kitchen is still completely preserved as it was built in the 16th century. These include, for example, the barrel-vaulted ceiling and the three-meter-wide open fireplace with a flat round arch at the top. There is an old oven on the right side of the fireplace, and the device with the rotatable roasting spit is still functional today.
Charles IX's bedroom is located on the ground floor at the north end of the east wing . with dark paneling and a bed, the valuable fabric covering has a French herringbone pattern . The room got its name from a short stay of the French King Charles IX. at the age of twelve, during which he stayed in this room.
The first floor is above Charles IX's bedroom. the bedroom of Catherine de Medici , who stayed there in 1562. The room has a light beamed ceiling and paneling in the same color. The eye-catcher is the canopy bed from the 17th century with silk curtains. A door leads from this room directly to a gallery in the neighboring, former castle chapel.
Above the guard room is the castle's dining room on the first floor, the floor of which is covered with black and white tiles. Its walls are clad with light paneling in the lower quarter and in the door area. The remaining areas are covered with a valuable linen wallpaper from the time of Louis XV. covered, which is painted on a turquoise background with plant tendrils and colorful flowers. The furniture from the workshop of the cabinet-maker Belet is white to match the light wood furnishings.
The room next to the dining room is the large salon in the donjon. It takes up its entire first floor and - like most other castle rooms - has a beamed ceiling. The white paneling has four recesses, which are filled with large tapestries from Aubusson . The wall hangings from the 17th century were made especially for this room, which is easy to recognize by their size, which is precisely matched to the paneling. They show scenes from Greek mythology. A large Savonnerie carpet covers the tiled floor . The specialty of this room is the large number of seating furniture with a covering made of red satin , because almost all types common in the 18th century are represented: two canapés , one bergère (French: Fauteuil Bergère ), eight queen armchairs (French: armchairs à la pure ) and four convertible armchairs (French: Fauteuil en cabriolet ), all of which come from the workshop of the Parisian cabinet maker Jean-Baptiste Lebas. Most of the armchairs are grouped around two game tables in the Louis-quinze style. Also worth seeing in this room is a black lacquered chest of drawers with gold-plated bronze applications from the Desmoulin workshop.
Other valuable pieces of furniture in the castle are a bed in the Empire style with a canopy tent in shape and a so-called vanity Secretary of the 18th century and in the little parlor six Louis XV armchairs and a splendid dresser me rococo decorations.
Garden and park
The northern part of the palace area is occupied by a seven-hectare garden with strictly symmetrical parterres in the Baroque style and a small park. From the farm yard you get to a garden terrace with two lawn parterres, which are planted with low trees and enclosed by a hedge. On the north side of the terrace, a semicircular flight of steps leads to the lower baroque garden, the planting of which has been restored since 1996 under the direction of landscape architect Joëlle Weill, according to authentic lists from the 18th century. A total of 19 parterres also serve as a fruit, vegetable and pleasure garden. The fruit parterres, in which old apple and pear varieties are cultivated, are loosened up by flower parterres. To the east of the garden is a large, well-tended lawn area, which is also a remnant of the former castle park, as is the wooded area north of the garden, which can be entered via a gate. It is criss-crossed by numerous paths that radiate through the forest from two central points.
history
Owners and residents
The roots of today's castle go back to the 13th century when Talcy was a seigneurie . Mentioned for the first time in 1221, the domain belonged to the St. Lazare family from Beaugency at that time .
In 1466, the lawyer Pierre Simon, who came from Paris, acquired the property and bequeathed it to his son Jean, through whom it came to Pierre's grandson Philippe. When Philippe died without male descendants, Talcy went to his brother Jean, who was a conseiller clerc in the Parlement and later became Bishop of Paris. After his death in 1502, the castle and the seigneurie came to Jean's sister Marie, who sold them to Bernard Salviati on November 8, 1517. The Florentine merchant and banker was in the service of Francis I and was a relative of Catherine de Medici through marriage . He gave the castle its current appearance through renovations and extensions. Bernard and his wife Madeleine de La Tour d'Auvergne had a daughter named Cassandre, whom Pierre de Ronsard met at a ball on April 25, 1545 in Blois Castle and with whom he fell in love. In 1552 Ronsard published a collection of poems entitled Amours de Cassandre , although the beloved did not honor his solicitation and married another man.
Cassandre's brother Jean became the new lord of the castle after the death of his father. His handsome daughter, Diane, whom he shared with his wife, Jacquette Malon de Bercy, was the second wife in the family to turn the head of a French writer. In this case it was the young Théodore Agrippa d'Aubigné who dedicated his first collection of poems, Le Printemps , to the beautiful Salviati daughter . At the time of Jeans, Talcy Castle also played a major role in French history for a few days, because on June 28 and 29, 1562, the regent Katharina von Medici and her underage son Charles IX met there. with representatives of the Huguenots such as Antoine de Bourbon and Louis I. de Bourbon for the so-called Conference of Talcy. During this meeting, the two parties tried to put an end to the clashes between Catholics and Huguenots in the French kingdom, but were unsuccessful.
Diane's brother Forese became the new master of Talcy after the death of her father and married Isabelle Sardini, the daughter of the lord of the Chaumont castle , Scipione Sardini. Their daughter, who was called Isabelle like her mother, was the first to have some structural changes carried out on the castle for a long time. The plant remained in the possession of the Salviatis until 1668, when Antoine de Preuilly bought it, but in 1674 he sold it on to Blanchard de St. Martin. From his heirs Talcy came to Jérémie Burgeat, who came from a family of royal officers who were raised to the nobility around 1720.
Three generations of the Burgeat family owned the castle before it was sold to Elisabeth Gastebois, a banker's widow, in 1780. With the marriage of her granddaughter Valentine to Philipp Albert Stapfer , the building came to this Swiss family of bankers and diplomats in 1834. After the death of the last inhabitant of the castle, her heirs sold the property to the French state on February 16, 1932, but agreed in the purchase contract that the furniture, wallpaper and tapestries that had been preserved could not be removed from the castle. The facility owes its exceptionally complete interior design to this contractual clause.
Building history
The oldest part of the palace complex is today's Donjon. After Talcy was acquired by Bernard Salviati, he received permission from the Archbishop of Toulouse, Jean dʼOrléans-Longueville, on September 12, 1520, to build a permanent house and equip it with walls, ditches, towers, loopholes and other defensive elements. The archbishop, who was the feudal lord Talcys as seigneur of Beaugency , stated that Bernard neither called himself lord of the castle nor set up his own bodyguard as a condition for this permission . But the new Mr. Talcys made no real use of the permission to fortify, because the castle, for example, never had a moat and therefore no drawbridge . And even the architectural elements, which were apparently defensive, no longer had a real defensive function, but were more of a decorative nature.
Although Salviati was Italian, from 1520 he did not have a castle built in the style of the Italian Renaissance, as was common everywhere in the Loire Valley at that time, but built a sober country castle in the simplicity of the French architectural tradition. Possibly he used existing, older building fabric of a gate built by the Simon family in 1480 . However, today's south wing and a first part of the east wing were added. Shortly after its completion, the second, northern part of the east wing was built. This wing was modified by Isabelle Salviati in 1638. She had today's ox-eyes break out and build portholes with volute gables in the attic. The interior was also rebuilt between 1633 and 1643. Among other things, the garden room was redesigned and the dining room was equipped with new paneling. In addition, several chimneys in the castle date from that period, for example the one in the great drawing room .
Further changes did not take place until the 18th century under the Burgeat family. She had the old palace buildings equipped with some comfort and gave the gardens their current, baroque appearance by having the kitchen garden replanted. She also created a fish pond and built an orangery . In 1835 the castle went downhill economically, which was reflected in the redesign of the park. 78 hectares of its area was converted into agricultural land for the leaseholder of the buildings in the farm yard. The gradually neglected garden has been restored since 1996.
The last construction work on the castle began in 2005 and lasted a year. They were used to restore some rooms and their furnishings.
literature
- Catherine Bibollet, Robert de Laroche: Châteaux, parcs et jardins en vallée de la Loire . Renaissance du livre, Tournai 2003, ISBN 2-8046-0754-2 , pp. 77-80.
- Alba de Céspedes: love locks. In: The most beautiful castles and palaces in France. 1st edition. Das Beste, Zürich, Stuttgart, Vienna 1979, ISBN 3-7166-0020-2 , pp. 56–57.
- Vincent Cochet: Le chateau de Talcy . Monum, Éd. du Patrimoine, Paris 2006, ISBN 2-85822-881-7 .
- Wilfried Hansmann : The Loire Valley. Castles, churches and cities in the «Garden of France» . 2nd Edition. DuMont Reiseverlag, Ostfildern 2006, ISBN 3-7701-6614-0 , p. 79-82 .
- Wiebke Krabbe (transl.): The castles of the Loire . Komet, Frechen 2001, ISBN 3-89836-200-0 , pp. 98-99.
- Frédéric Lesueur: Talcy. In: Société française dʼarchéologie (ed.): Congrès archéologique de France . Vol. 88, 1926, ISSN 0069-8881 , pp. 495-508 ( digitized version ).
- Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, Robert Polidori : Castles in the Loire Valley . Könemann, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-89508-597-9 , p. 326-329 .
- René Polette: Lovable Loire castles . Morstadt, Kehl 1996, ISBN 3-88571-266-0 , pp. 99-101.
- The green travel guide. Castles on the Loire. Michelin, Landau-Mörlheim 2005, ISBN 2-06-71159-1-X , pp. 297-298.
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ Entry of the castle in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
- ↑ Bernard Champigneulle: Loire castles . 6th edition. Prestel, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7913-0276-0 , p. 41.
- ^ W. Hansmann: The valley of the Loire. 2006, p. 80 ( digitized version ).
- ↑ R. Polette names the Belets workshop as the place of origin. See R. Polette: Lovable Loire Castles . 1996, p. 101.
- ^ F. Lesueur: Talcy. 1926, p. 507.
- ↑ R. Polette: Lovable Loire castles. 1996 p. 101.
- ↑ a b c d Press release from the Center des monuments nationaux from 2005 ( Memento of November 13, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), p. 5.
- ↑ jardins-de-france.com ( Memento from November 14, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) [], accessed on April 20, 2016.
- ↑ a b ac-orleans-tours.fr ( Memento of November 26, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ castle history chateau-talcy.fr , access on 20 April 2016th
- ^ A b Jean-Pierre Babelon: Châteaux de France au siècle de la Renaissance . Flammarion, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-08-012062-X , pp. 50 .
- ↑ Eckhard Philipp: The Loire Valley . 3. Edition. Goldstadtverlag, Pforzheim 1993, ISBN 3-87269-078-7 , p. 324.
- ^ Léon Stapfer: Le château de Talcy . In: Société de lʼhistoire du protestantisme français (ed.): Bulletin historique et littéraire . Vol. 9, No. 23/2, 1874, p. 278 ( digitized version ).
- ↑ a b Le chateau de Talcy. In: Bulletin de la société de lʼhistoire du protestantisme français. Vol. 82, No. 4, 1933, ISSN 0037-9050 p. 516.
- ↑ monumental.over-blog.net , accessed on April 20, 2016.
- ^ F. Lesueur: Talcy. 1926, p. 496.
- ↑ mumu.bleublog.ch ( Memento from February 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ talcy.monuments-nationaux.fr ( Memento of April 26, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ F. Lesueur: Talcy. 1926, p. 503.
- ↑ loire-france.com , accessed April 20, 2016.
Coordinates: 47 ° 46 ′ 11 " N , 1 ° 26 ′ 40" E