Christmas fireworks over the ducal park from the Market Square
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.
SEVEN NEW CLICKS!
Sunday 8 December 2019
Sunday 17 November 2019
Wednesday 13 November 2019
The Cape and Rapier Festival 2018 on U-Tube
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Thanks to Malachy
alias
alias
L'Éminentissime cardinal duc de Richelieu
reportage réalise par Claude Méry
photographe et vidéaste
with gratitude!
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reportage réalise par Claude Méry
photographe et vidéaste
with gratitude!
***
Labels:
Cape et Épée,
Claude Méry,
Festivals,
U-tube
Sunday 8 September 2019
The new location of the town's Notary.
The former treasury of the town of Richelieu, where formerly local taxes were levied and paid, is now being restored and renovated as the offices of the town' s new Notary.
It is, thank goodness, one site in the place des Religieuses that is being refurbished, while many of its grand neighbours are either empty, derelict or up for sale. The northern sector of this particular building is in a state of gross delapidation. Its price to purchase is absurdly small, but no-one so far wants to take on the cost of restoration of the Grade 1 protected part-hôtel particulier.
The former public functions of this building have been transferred to an office in Île Bouchard, a few kilometres away.
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Labels:
place des Religieuses,
Renovations
Saint Anne teaches the young Virgin to read
The statue has been restored, particularly the support stone that was formerly fractured and decaying.
BRAVO!
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Labels:
Art,
Louis XIII style,
Renovations,
Sculpture,
statues
The half completed by-pass - September 2019
September 2019: The civil engineering works to complete the town's by-pass continue apace. All should be complete by the year's end. An end to the endless daily procession of huge euro-trucks that lumber noisily past the 400 year-old girdling walls of the Cité Idéale. Two thirds of this controversial by-pass have been completed for more than a decade, so everyone is pleased that, FINALLY, the objective of protecting the historic little town from the logistics assault will shortly be achieved.
The long-standing obstruction - some problems of plant and animal habitat disturbance - have themselves apparently been 'by-passed'.
looking at the round-about at the northern end |
looking down the long new road, westward ho |
CLICK the image to enlarge - a panorama of the point of the northern junction |
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Saturday 4 May 2019
The project starts - the North West tower
for more details about this project
click
the artisan craftsmen restoration team |
along the moat |
the bache is erected |
getting the right position |
awaiting the start of the project - summer 2019 |
Labels:
Renovations,
Tour St. Anne
Monday 11 March 2019
The by-pass to be completed by November
Work starts in mid-March 2019, and the project will be complete in eight months time.
Operational in November 2019.
The RED element of the by-pass, 2.7 kilometres in length, will connect the two already complete sections of SW 1.65 km (1998) and NE 1.99 km (2003).
Finally the noisy heavy trucks will pass the cité idéale at a suitable distance!
25th March 2019 work commences! |
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Monday 18 February 2019
The ambition and power of Richelieu
A long lecture in French by the Parisian scholar of the cardinal duc's biography delivered on 18 November 2015.
delivered a conference at the Paris University, ILERI
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Labels:
History,
Richelieuiana
Friday 18 January 2019
The co-working space Cité Richelieu opens....
A first photograph taken by our favourite photographer
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Labels:
Business,
Cité Richelieu,
Coworking,
Place Louis XIII
Tuesday 15 January 2019
Saint Anne teaches young Mary to read
When the Ideal Town was built in the 1630s, the external girdling walls, the entry gates and the vehicle carriageways themselves were constructed at the Crown's expense.
Louis XIII and Anne d'Autriche, King and Queen of France and Navarre.
The Cardinal also sought to have his new town's children well educated by the Sisters, so he founded nunneries that followed catholic teaching orders. These convents he located on the western side of the town, furthest away from the little moated river Veude that runs past the town's eastern boundary. The prevailing wind blows the smoke of the town's chimneys, away from the children at school, over the roofs to the east. The western side of the town still accommodates these schoolchildren today.
The street that accommodated these schooling premises, as well as the church's presbytery, came to be called rue Sainte Anne. Saint Anne was the mother of the Virgin Mary, and in a sense the grandmother of Jesus. In renaissance religious art she is typically shown teaching Mary to read. Just as the Sisters were doing to their charges in the adjacent buildings...
King Louis must have been flattered by the Queen Anne/Saint Anne allusion!
the dedicatee! |
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Labels:
Art,
Louis XIII style,
Renovations,
Sculpture,
St.Anne,
statues
Monday 14 January 2019
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