The topics of this blog are Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Duke of Richelieu, and the IDEAL CITY built on his command next to his magnificent CHÂTEAU on the borders of Touraine, Anjou and Poitou, in France.

Thursday 21 March 2013

Alain Mannesson Malet

The famous books on geometry written by Alain (Allain?) Manesson Mallet (1630–1706), published in the 1680s, set out various methods of marking geometrical layouts, seemingly  in front of the famous new buildings of his day.
The château de Richelieu, the palace of Armand-Jean du Plessis, cardinal duc de Richelieu, is used several times as background to these illustrations.  Below we show some of these pages  culled from the web.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Manesson_Mallet
Alain Manesson Mallet
the chateau de Richelieu and the oval
the 'demi-lune' garden of the château
his book on geometry
in four volumes
the rear façade of the château
the main axis of the château


Thursday 7 March 2013

Palais Cardinal

The 'Palais Cardinal' in Paris in the life of the cardinal duc;
it was renamed the 'Palais Royal' once the Regente Queen Anne and the child-king Louis XIV lived there
after the cardinal's death in 1642

Wednesday 6 March 2013

b'cos your worth it, darling...

was she short of a bob? - surely not!

CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS

We bring you Miss Elinor Wise of Baltimore USA, eighth and last duchesse de Richelieu, with her very understandable worries about her complexion, as the years, sadly, roll on...