Nocturne Gourmande - Friday 6 August 2021

Everyman has supper together in the place du Marché

Each year an evening is set aside for local caterers to 'feed the multitudes'. In Covid-19 year 2, everyone had to be cautious but it seems that there is much less hazard in the open air.  Many or even most of us are now double-innoculated. Everyone enjoyed this favourite annual public event. 

 My dish was 10 euro paella.....

Itinerant musical entertainment

Young and old alike, partying together....

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Bonnes fêtes - Merry Christmas 2019

Christmas fireworks over the ducal park from the Market Square

Nocturne Gourmande 2018 - the movie

all credit to Claude Méry


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The restored façade of the town's church, Our Lady of Richelieu

in sunshine

overcast

The Eastern front of the church has been restored, and recently the extensive scaffold has been struck, showing off the fine tuffeau façade,

 including the four statues of the evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke &a mp; John.

Unusually, the church’s altar faces West - away from the sunrise and the holy city of Jerusalem  - whats that all about, Cardy & Jacques?

Do we need a Dan Brown to write a mystic story as justification?

A Jesuit-style façade based on Il Gesù in Rome, design by Vignola.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Gesù

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A new wine bar for Pascale and François Plouzeau

14 place du Marché - Cave à vins Plouzeau

 The local wine growers,Pascale and  François Plouzeau have opened a shop in the place du Marché to offer their bio-dynamic wines. The boutique replaces the former estate agent Archard in a rather pretty shop adjacent to the tourist office.

the facade to the square

try a wine here at the zinc bar!

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The Office of Tourism

Sunlight is falling on the façade of the restored Tourist Office, adding a nice shadow to the elevated lettering on the front wall. We wait hoping that the other half of this hôtel particulier - mansion - will shortly be restored to match, now that it has been acquired by the Townhall, together with the adjacent shop. All the Place du Marché's corner pavilions are very conspicuous in the urban vista.

A few friends came round to dinner....

The annual Nocturne Gourmande took place on the Friday 5th August 2016. As you can see from the video below, it was a vibrant success, with many, many visitors. The market square has many purposes but this event turned the square into a giant public theatre. Both the LeMercier boys, designers of the square and the town itself in 1630, with their eminent client, the Cardinal Duke, would have been thrilled.

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The Brasserie on the place du Marché

the Brasserie Richelieu next to la halle

This fine building dating from the 1830s is occupied by the Brasserie Richelieu. As one can see on the banner on the façade, it has a new owner. We all hope that this change of proprietors can be a 'new dawn' as the other Richelieu cafés and restaurants seem to be in rather a state of flux.  

The Fossé Saint Ange is a shadow of it former self, now open only occasionally; a new pizza restaurant located in the former mercerie on the market square is now established and very busy; the former Café des Sports has been comprehensively remodelled and now is a fine small bistro called Le Chinon; the former pizza restaurant that was located in the Porte de Châtellerault has changed hands and owners (?), and is to be a bar; the much missed Salon de Thé has disappeared down the Grande Rue leaving its former grand presence in the place du Marché sad and empty; the Restaurant Fabio located at the back of la Halle has closed when its proprietor finally retired....

Good luck to all the new enterprises and adieu to our old friends.

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the place du Marché Richelieu in February 2016

a view looking north-east

One of the nice things about gridded 17th century neo-classical towns is that they are often actually perceived in the diagonal. Then the forms suddenly are seen in diagonal perspective and orthogonally-aligned buildings fill unexpected vistas; in this case, one of  the rear pavilions of the halle fits between the standardised slate roofs of the other pavilions and an hôtel particulier. 

One of the characteristics of 17th century French buildings is that each rectangular block of the building's plan has its own 'pyramidal' capping roof - they were not generally linked together until a later 18th century became more exuberant and adventurous in their roof-scape design and engineering.

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JLL takes a circular panoramas from the centre of the place du Marché, Richelieu

JLL, hope you don't mind the Abbé Proust re-blogging this exercise in photography!

HERE IS THE BIGGER VERSION

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TRY THIS ONE - ITS EVEN BETTER

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squaring a circle

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JLL's blog

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A new shop opens on the place du Marché

The new shop, called 'Contance's Wardrobe', replaces an antique and brocante shop that had been there for many years.

The premises have been refurbished and a new mezzanine is now accessible from the floor of the shop.  Originally the 17th C building had full-height rooms on the ground floor, as exemplified by the Office de Tourisme across the square in the symmetrical position.

Bâtiments de France seem to have been quite compliant with the new owners, as the façade of the hôtel particular - which has recently been fully restored from the first floor string course upwards to the roof - has not been 'correctly' restored to its original elevation.

Ummm……

The re-opening of the Halle...

Restored for the first time since the 1640s, 371 years after the death of the original client, the 

cardinal duc Armand-Jean,

the town's market halle nears re-completion.

Modern regulations for food handling require a glass screen behind the restored railings,

but otherwise the structure is now historically impeccable - no expense has been spared.

A quality project - Bravo Hervé and his artisans!

Next restoration in 2384.

the official invitation to the opening

the gate to the place du Marché

parking quickly in the handicapped bay on the place du Marché

Cape et Epée 2012 - the movies

the Dark Cavalier...

The little town comes to life with thousands of visitors who enjoy seeing the place inhabited by various bands of historical re-enacters. And having a good lunch together in the market square...

In the evening the jollity continues with dancers and FIRE EATERS?
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Progress at the Grand Colbert/New Tourist Office

Contract  value for the restoration of this 'half'  hôtel particulier from arch to street corner only
240,000€
no backland or back façade, but to the full satisfaction of Bâtiments de France
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Facades restored and 'edited'

New doorway on the side façade

First floor window openings

Side (N) façade with new first floor windows installed

Main façade to the market square restored and 'edited'!

And here are a few 'before shots'

Four restoration projects advance...

Here are update photos of four projects underway in November 2011.

Project A

The Cinéma Majèstic redevelopment progresses and it has now re-opened for pubic use.  Unfortunately, the Abbé Henri Proust was busy with pastoral visits on the nights that had the new film of the adventures of Belgian boy-detective, TINTIN, in the new 3-D version.  The cinema has had to be updated to allow the latest in projection technology to filter down to this little town of la france profonde.

Look HERE for a link to former posts on the project A, Cinéma Majestic.

Project B

The town's tourist office is to be relocated to a building adjacent to the church, on the place du marché.  The building is one of the original hotêls particulars that until recently was known by the name of the shop formerly located on its ground floor, Le Grand Colbert. The façade has been reconstructed and refenestrated in the authentic original layout. The roof repaired and newly slated. Half of the mansion is in the ownership of a lady in Chicago, they say, but now that part too needs a scrub-up, and needs a new ground floor tenant as well. 

Look HERE to see other posts on project B, Le Grand Colbert.

Project C

The town's hotel, le Puits Doré, is extending its property.  Although the scaffold is still in place while the faced works continue, the newly restored roof can now bee seen complete with matching lucarnes - roof lights.  As this building is fully 'listed', all the materials must be  authentic, in this case expensive roofing slates.

Click HERE to see other posts on the Puits Doré, project C.

Project D

Another dilapidated hôtel particular on the Grande Rue is now under restoration, this time on the western side, above the former tourist office.  The dreadful old roof is under repair - as architects say; 'always protect from water coming down and water coming up!'

that's all for now, folks!

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The 'Puits Doré' starts to expand

The town's hotel , the Puits Doré - 'The Golden Well' - is expanding its premises.  The building works have started on the rear wing of their hôtel particulier on the south-western flank of the main town square, the place du marché.  The expansion will provide the hotel with more bedrooms, which in turn will ensure the continued viability of the business.  We have been told that the Puits Doré has been an operating hotel almost from the founding of the Ideal Town in the 1640s.  

Meanwhile the hotel continues to receive visitors and set  a jolly tone on the south side of the square.

It must be important for this little town that tourism can support and sustain such a hotel, as tourism and its grandiose history, cultural and architectural, are the aspects of the town that differentiate it from its myriad neighbours, each struggling to find a purpose in a dispersed agricultural world where the farms are de-populated by modern mechanisation.  Richelieu remains a centre for quite a large farming area as the good Cardinal had the farsightedness and ruthlesness to ensure that his new town did not have urban competitors closer than about 20km - Loudun, Chinon, L'Isle Bouchard, St Maure de Touraine, each at arm's length.  This 'isolation zone' maintains the serenity and tranqillity of the place, but sets it a bit aside from the mainstream.

The main front of the hotel on the place du Marché

The façade onto the Grande Rue, showing the part under renovation.

The hotel finally occupies the entire hôtel particulier, 2 Grande Rue.

the new rear façade to rue du Chantier, next to the Porte de Châtellerault.

the mason's sign.

It will be interesting to see to what extent the Bâtiments de France will require the renovated premises to be 'restored' to a more authentic state, and whether the strict line they have taken recently will be continued.  We will follow the works over the next few months and find out.

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