Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye

Coordinates: 48°53′53″N 2°05′47″E / 48.89806°N 2.09639°E / 48.89806; 2.09639
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Map
General information
LocationSaint-Germain-en-Laye, France
Construction started1124
Design and construction
Architect(s)Pierre Chambiges

The Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye (French pronunciation:

département of Yvelines, about 19 km west of Paris, France. Today, it houses the musée d'Archéologie nationale
(National Museum of Archaeology).

History

12th–13th centuries

Sainte-Chapelle

The first castle, named the Grand Châtelet, was built on the site by Louis VI in 1124. The castle was expanded by Louis IX in the 1230s.

Louis IX's chapelle Saint Louis at the castle belongs to the

Baldwin II of Constantinople presented Louis with the relic of the crown of thorns
and, though they were intended for the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, they were housed here until the Paris chapel was consecrated in April 1248.

The castle was burned by the

Black Prince in 1346; of it, only the Gothic chapel remains from the site's medieval phase. This Château Vieux was rebuilt by Charles V
in the 1360s on the old foundations.

16th–18th centuries

Château-Neuf de St-Germain-en-Laye
, a new addition to the palace that was later demolished

The oldest parts of the current château were reconstructed by Francis I in 1539, and have subsequently been expanded several times. On 10 July 1547 a political rivalry came to a head in a legal duel here. Against the odds, Guy I de Chabot, 7th baron de Jarnac triumphed over François de Vivonne, seigneur de la Chasteigneraie, who died the next day after what was called "coup de Jarnac".[1]

Staircase tower in the corner of the court

Étienne du Pérac[2] into three massive descending terraces and narrower subsidiary mediating terraces, which were linked by divided symmetrical stairs and ramps and extended a single axis that finished at the edge of the Seine; the design took many cues from the Villa Lante at Bagnaia.[3] "Étienne du Pérac had spent a long time in Italy, and one manifestation of his interest in gardens of this type is his well-known view of the Villa d'Este, engraved in 1573."[4]

The gardens laid out at Saint-Germain-en-Laye were among a half-dozen gardens introducing the Italian garden style to France that laid the groundwork for the French formal garden. Unlike the parterres that were laid out in casual relation to existing châteaux, often on difficult sites originally selected for defensive reasons,[5] these new gardens extended the central axis of a symmetrical building façade in rigorously symmetrical axial designs of patterned parterres, gravel walks, fountains and basins, and formally planted

Alexandre Francini, 1614.[8]

Silvestre's view of the uppermost terrace of the Château Neuf, shows (with artistic license) its neglected state.

Versailles, the team that he inherited from the unfortunate Nicolas Fouquet—Louis Le Vau, Jules Hardouin-Mansart and André Le Nôtre
laboured to give the ancient pile a more suitable aspect.

The gardens were remade by André Le Nôtre from 1669 to 1673, and include a 2.4 kilometre long stone terrace which provides a view over the valley of the Seine and, in the distance, Paris.

railway station
.

Louis XIV turned the château over to King

Adrien Maurice, 3rd Duke of Noailles.[9] The Jacobite colony at Saint-Germain was still dominant in the 1750s, when they were however treated with increasing hostility. After the death of the Duke de Noailles in 1766, who had been responsible for the continuing Jacobite dominance because of his preference to give rooms to Jacobites, the British dominance quickly decreased and more French inhabitants were given lodgings in the château: the last member of the Stuart court was Theresa O'Connel, who died in 1778.[9] The last descendants of the British Jacobites, by then mostly bearing French names, were evicted when the building was confiscated by the government during the French revolution in 1793.[9]

19th–21st centuries

In the 19th century,

Napoleon I established his cavalry officers' training school here. Napoleon III initiated restoration of the castle by Eugène Millet, starting in 1862. It became the Musée des Antiquités Nationales (National Museum of Antiquities) in 1867, displaying the archeological objects of France.[citation needed] Auguste Lafollye took over responsibility for the restoration on Millet's death in 1879, continuing until 1889. His goal, and that of his successor Honoré Daumet, was to restore the French Renaissance style of Francis I.[10]

On September 10, 1919 the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, ending hostilities between the Allies of World War I and Austria, was signed at the château.[11]

During the German occupation (1940–44), the château served as the headquarters of the German Army in France.

The museum was renamed the

Merovingian
times.

Gallery

  • The palace as seen from the gardens
    The palace as seen from the gardens
  • Angle view of the palace
    Angle view of the palace
  • Details of the palace's façade
    Details of the palace's façade
  • The entrance of the palace
    The entrance of the palace
  • The entrance of the museum
    The entrance of the museum
  • The inner courtyard
    The inner courtyard
  • One of the staircases
    One of the staircases
  • The inner ceilings
    The inner ceilings

Notes

  1. ^ Baumgartner, Frederic (1988). Henry II: King of France 1547-1559. Duke University Press. p. 60.
  2. ^ Karling 1974, p 10
  3. ^ F. Hamilton Hazlehurst, Jacques Boyceau, pp. 20, 77–79, 100, noted by Karling.
  4. ^ Karling 1974, p. 11
  5. ^ Even the parterres at Fontainebleau bear no direct relation to the façades of the château.
  6. Verneuil
    and Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
  7. ^ The book was not published until 1652, but it had long been in preparation (Karling 1974).
  8. ^ Francini's engraving is illustrated by Karling, fig. 8.
  9. ^
    ISBN 978-0-521-58462-3
    .
  10. ISBN 978-2-9520091-8-8
    . Retrieved 2013-06-12.
  11. ^ "Austrian treaty signed in amity," The New York Times, Sept. 11, 1919, p. 12.
  12. ^ Ministerial decree no. 2005-698 of June 22, 2005

External links

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48°53′53″N 2°05′47″E / 48.89806°N 2.09639°E / 48.89806; 2.09639

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