Palace of Poitiers
The palace of the Counts of Poitou/Dukes of Aquitaine in Poitiers in Poitou in western France is a medieval testimony of the Plantagenet style of architecture.
Until 2019, this building was used as a courthouse.
Origin
The former
The palace was completely rebuilt, straddling the wall, by the Count-Dukes of Aquitaine, then at the pinnacle of their power. In 1104, Count
Between 1191 and 1204, Eleanor (locally "Alienor") fitted up a dining hall, the Salle des Pas Perdus, the "hall of lost footsteps", where a footfall was silenced by the vastness of its space— 50 metres in length, 17 metres in width, perhaps the largest in contemporary Europe. The hall has not retained its original beamed ceiling; it has been covered by chestnut woodwork, constructed in 1862 by a team of marine carpenters from La Rochelle. The walls of the hall are daubed and painted so as to imitate stone facing. Their monotony is relieved by cusped arches resting on slender columns. A stone bench rings the walls of the hall.
Reconstruction
In 1384–86
The tour Maubergeon was reconstructed on three floors with ogival vaulting, illuminated by glazed windows and topped by nineteen statues. Of these, only sixteen pieces survive: they represent the duke's counsellors in clerical habits, while the statues of the duke and his wife are missing. In its unfinished state, the tower has neither machicolations nor canopies above the statues.
At the behest of Guy de Dammartin, three monumental stoves were installed in the grand hall; they were decorated with Gothic Flamboyant statuary and surmounted by a gallery. The southern wall of the hall was also overhauled: it was pierced by great bays which masked the pipes from outside view. The exterior of this wall was decorated with flamboyant ogives. The floor was tiled by Jehan de Valence, called "the Saracen" in the accounts, with green and gold circular
Later developments
The count-dukes sometimes administered justice in the great hall. It was there that Hugues de Lusignan, comte de la Marche, publicly challenged Louis IX on Christmas Day, 1241. After the province of Poitou was reattached to the royal domain, la salle des pas perdus was renamed la salle du Roi ("the royal hall"). A judicial institution, le parlement royal, sat there from 1418 to 1436.
The palace was used for administering justice: on 5 June 1453
Notes
- ^ Poitiers had been a Visigothic seat of power; for general context see Carlrichard Brühl, Palatium und Civitas: Studien zur Profantopographie spätantiker Civitates vom 3. bis zum 13. Jahrhundert, i: Gallien (Cologne/Vienna) 1975.
- ^ "Cour d'Appel de Poitiers".
- ^ The official website Archived 31 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine offers an etymology from mallobergum, the place of tribunal (Merovingian mallum) on the hill (berg), the vicomtesse deriving her name "La Maubergionne" from this place of residence where she was installed.
- ^ Duke Jean's accounts for the reconstruction at Poitiers, 1384–86, are preserved in the Archives Nationales, Paris (M. L. Solon, "The Lustred Tile Pavement of the Palais de Justice of Poitiers" The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 12 No. 56 (November 1907), pp. 83–86) p 56.
- ^ Solon 1907.
References
This article is based on a translation of the equivalent article of the French Wikipedia on 4 November 2006.