A video on the town of Richelieu on channel France 3

La cité de Richelieu en Indre-et-Loire - kewego

En 1631, le roi Louis XIII pour remercier son ministre, le Cardinal de Richelieu, de ses éminents services, lui fit la faveur d’ériger sa seigneurie en duché-pairie.............

 In 1631, King Louis XIII of France and Navarre allowed his first minister, the cardinal de Richelieu, the favour of elevating his country estate to that of a duchy, so thanking him for his eminent service to the Crown.............

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A new addition to Collège Sacré Coeur - 1

The private middle school within the walls of Richelieu, the Collège Sacré Coeur, has acquired a courtyard building on rue Henri Proust which will become an extension of school premises.  The building was originally the carriage court and servant's quarters of the grand house adjacent.

The structure is being restored and a pupil of the collège has told that it will be used among other things for gymnastic facilities.

We will return with more pictures as the project progresses.

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These up-date pictures taken in April 2010

A Gazette for the town of Richelieu?

M Le Borgne at the initiating meeting in the Salle Lemercier 21 Novembre 2009

Following in the footsteps of Théophraste Renaudot (below), 17th century journalist of Loudun & Paris and créature of the cardinal de Richelieu, Jacques Le Borgne (above) proposes to create a new gazette for the town and cantons of Richelieu that will tell all of events planned in the coming weeks and raise questions and answers with the Conseil Municipal.  While the journal will be 'a-political' and 'not contentious' - a politique, non-polémique, seulement citoyenne - he hopes to bring the various interest groups of Richelieu together to help take the town forward.

• to circulate information of anything that concerns the town's social life
  
• to publicise decisions made by the Conseil Muncipal, events and projects
  
• to allow questions that concern the citizens of Richeleu to be raised and pursued and to publish the responses
  
• to make all initiatives taken known to a wider audience than is the case today
  

This new gazette - a paper document that will appear bi-monthly will, he hopes, be placed in every letterbox of the town and reach those parts of the community that other gazettes cannot reach.  A trial first edition (number 0, like an early Bruckner symphony!) will be followed by the very first edition to be really circulated by the newly-volunteered editorial team.

Perhaps this blog can help the eager new journalists on their way.

contact francois.daric@orange.fr

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Pierre Le Muet - 'How to build well for all types of person'

 "Manière de bien bastir pour touttes sortes des personnes"

This engraving comes from an architectural treatise written in 1623 by Pierre le Muet intended as a copy-book of architectural designs for the simple and domestic buildings of the French seventeenth century.

This sectional drawing illustrates the section of many of the existing buildings in Richelieu, with which the treatise is contemporary. All the period terms for the elements of the charpentes are itemised.

2009 celebrates the 30th year of the firm SARL MERLOT - Charpente et Couverture  located on the Richelieu industrial estate (see map on the right).  The firm's leadership will pass from the founder M. Etienne to his son Fabrice on 11 December 2010.  Entirely by coincidence, the coloured photo below shows a new oak roof structure by MERLOT that is almost identical to that drawn above by Pierre Le Muet, nearly 350 years ago.

In the humble house of Abbé Henri Proust, the roof trusses are king-post trusses in oak, and actually ARE 350 years old. As Merlot's 2009 catch phrase says:

 "La Qualité défie le Temps - Quality defies time (and weather!)"

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The Paris XII bistrot: "le duc de Richelieu"

try the blog run by the proprietors.... 

"le duc de Richelieu" could refer to any of the eight dukes of Richelieu;

probably not Armand-Jean 'le cardinal de Richelieu', and probably not the notorious 3rd duke, 'le maréchal de Richelieu'

Maybe the 5th duke, founder of Odessa and twice Prime Minister of France who succeeded Tallyrand?

Perhaps the owners will enlighten us...

HERE is a list of the ducal candidates .

tel: 01 43 43 05 64

A short promenade to the east from the Île St. Louis

Yes - that's the island in the Seine on the left of the map...

Below an article in Figaro

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the Vitruvian townhouse or 'domus'

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (c.90 - c.20 BC) is the author of the only known treatise on the art and practice of architecture coming down to us from the classical world of Rome.  He offers de Architectura to the Emperor Augustus as a summation his life-long expertise on building and construction matters, much of it learned by advising the Legions of the Empire.

It has been a book of enormous influence, as much for its rarity as its magpie contents.  It was the basis of most of the treatises of the architecture of the Italian renaissance, including the most famous and influential, I Quattro Libri dell' Architectura, (Venice 1570) of Andrea Palladio.

Regrettably all the illustrations to which the original text refers have long been lost.  So each new learned reader has tried to recreate these illustrations from the text and their own contemporary experience.

A new translation by Richard Schofield has been published by Penguin Classics.  Included is a recreation of the plan of the layout of a typical Roman house.  Surprisingly few archaeological examples of 'normal' Roman townhouses remain, even when helped by the later discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum in 1748.

1 - entry or vestibulum

2 - entrance corridor or fauces

3 - rectangular catchment area or impluvium

4 - entry court or atrium

5 - side rooms or alae

6 - 'home office' or tablinum

7 - corridor or andron

8 - colonnaded courtyard or peristylium

9 - open faced room or exhedra

Read here about Pierre le Muet

and here about the houses of Richelieu

While the houses at Richelieu are clearly derived from the traditional French early renaissance hôtels of the 16th century, there is no mistaking the new influence of these Roman models, with their deep plots arranged side by side, their high boundary walls, their double courtyard format, their use of what the French call dépendances or side extensions, or the fact that private life is led deep within the layered plan.

Every aspect of the cardinal's ambitions for the town drew on the Roman Example to reflect and encourage a new

Golden Age.

The Rome of Augustus recreated for the glory of Louis XIII 

and his First Minister

Armand-Jean d P 

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the late Charton Heston on the cardinal

Richelieu's knockers (3)... well Paris' Marais actually

A nice example of 17th century ironwork decoration embroidering the typical hanging ring knocker on a Marais hôtel on its main street-front carriage gate.

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1 rue des Gaulthiers - a little property gets restored...

This little housekin is on the eastern side of the walled town of Richelieu, with a garden behind that leads down to the moat/canal of the Mable river.  I was lately used by Jean-Louis Laurence as the base of his internet consultancy UPWARD, but since Jean-Louis L moved to grander premises on the Grande Rue itself, it has been restored, re-roofed and generally licked into shape.  It stands adjacent to another much larger restoration that looks onto the place Louis XIII.

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