Richelieu's hanging shop signs

The architectural colours of Touraine - 1

One of the most characteristic qualities of the buildings of Touraine is the consistency of the 'colour palette'.  With a sky often cloudy or overcast, a truely delightful aspect of the area occurs when the many 'greys' are lit up by sunshine falling on the ubiquitous greeny-cream 'tuffeau' stone work.  This little building shows off the traditional palette well - it is a gatehouse at the château of Azay-le-Rideau.

• whitish tuffeau stonework around windows doors and at the corners
  
• pinkish rendering to the coursed rubble walls between
• grey 'ardoise' slates
  
• flat grey-painted windows and doors
  
• grey shutters, often left closed
• overhanging stone cornices in tuffeau
• french grey painted oak dormers
• zinc rainwater pipes with a characteristic Touraine gutter design
• whitish hard stone setts
• decorative ironwork, in this case in faded blue paint
• sandy gravel ground surface
• a few patches of rising damp in the render at ground level - very typical too!

The renovation at 13 Grande Rue

One of the most spectacular houses of the town is being restored - one of three mansions that are now being worked on that are close to the centre of the Grande Rue, around rue Traversière. This particular! hotel particulier built for Le Ragois in the 1640s by Jean Barbet, was heavily 'updated' in the nineteenth century with the removal of the rear range of dépendances on the south side. As a result it has a lovely sunlit garden along rue Traversière that all can see through the railings.  At present the work is being done to the remaining rear range on the north side of the garden.

Boating on the château canals on 3rd September 1905

Hervé Novelli elected the new Mayor of Richelieu

Last week HERVÉ NOVELLI was elected the new mayor of Richelieu.  

He follows his colleague the out-going Mayor Pierre Gravel, who was responsible inter alia for the reconstruction of the place du Marché in '06-'07 and the purchase of 28 Grande Rue as an example of the grand houses of the town, accessible to the tourist and general visitor.  He also realised the recreation of the château of Richelieu in a 3-D digital realisation.  These three acts have made the extraordinary patrimony of the town very much more 'visible' to the visitor. While Richelieu could improve the welcome it extends to a visitor even further, these three aspects have improved the town's reception considerably.

Hervé Novelli is a Minister of State in the government of PM Francois Fillon & President Nicholas Sarkozy, with the portfolio of external trade, and now of tourism.  While he is clearly a busy chap, it is not uncommon for French government ministers to have a role as a local mayor, despite their onerous responsibilities in Paris.  It keeps their feet in the 'terroir' so to speak!  Let us hope he keeps the interest of his town of family and birth in the front of his mind!

As M.Novelli has observed, a long time ago there was once ...another Minister who came from Richelieu...

Vignola, Lemercier and Jesuit church architecture of the counter-reformation

The counter-reformation was at its height during the period of the construction of the Ideal City of Richelieu. Since the re-conversion from protestantism of Henri IV in 1593, the end of the French 'Wars of Religion' of the sixteenth century and the consequent founding of the new Bourbon dynasty, Roman catholicism had come to dominate the religious aspect of the French state. The mother of Louis XIII, Maria di Medici (Italian) and his wife Anne of Austria (Spanish) were both very pious, and often supported the then-dominant catholic power of Spain. The Jesuits, an order founded by the Spaniard, Ignatius of Loyola, became the favourite religious order of the Pope to reconvert the catholics of Europe after the influences of Luther and Calvin.

Architect Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola designed the mother church of the Jesuits in Rome, Il Gesù, in 1568-75. Liturgically the Jesuits had new requirements in the layout of churches as amongst other things they were no longer required to say and sing the Daily Offices; indeed music's influence on the liturgy was reduced generally. Vignola's seminal design omitted the space for the choir and for any screen in front of the altar, now to be located in a shallow apse. A pulpit for preaching was introduced and a stone vaulted ceiling favoured for the acoustics of the spoken word.

Vignola's Jesuit church in Rome was called Il Gesù and it became the template for catholic church design for the following 250 years.

When Jacques Lemercier designed the church at Richelieu he followed obediently this Jesuit tradition, then recently established. Many of the churches of that and later eras have more than a family resemblance, as can be seen from these pictures:

Jesuit mother church of Il Gesù, Rome - Giacomo Vignola - 1575
East(!) front, Church of Our Lady, Richelieu - Jacques Lemercier 1640
Church of St. Peter & Paul, Reuil-Malmaison - Jacques Lemercier - 1633
Church of the College of the Sorbonne - Jacques Lemercier - 1635
Court façade of the College of the Sorbonne - Jacques Lemercier - 1635
The Brompton Oratory, London - 1876 Herbert Gribble, S. façade 1893 George Sherrin
Archit. Jacques Lemercier
Archit. Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola

Is Richelieu in Indre-et-Loire, Touraine, Anjou, Saumur, Poitou...?

In 2008 the Cité Idéale of Richelieu is in the French administrative region called Region Centre. Population about 2.4 million.  It is located in the département of Indre-et-Loire, numbered 37, as seen on the last two digits of local car registration numbers (not for long!).

However it is talked of generally as being in Touraine, that is to say in the area to the north surrounding the city of Tours, and this is the location of the departmental Préfecture and the seat of the Conseil Général d' Indre-et-Loire.  The flag of Touraine still flies on the Richelieu town hall with the tricolor and often the flag of the EC.  Touraine is not now an officially defined area as are départements, and regions.

In the ancien régime, before the 1789 revolution, the Kingdom of France was organised into provinces up to March 4, 1790, when the centrally-imposed establishment of the département system superseded that of provinces.  Touraine (around Tours) was an ancient province, as was Anjou (around Angers) and Poitou (around Poitiers).

However Richelieu was then usually included in the province of Poitou to the south and is referred to as such in all the engravings of the period.  Touraine's houses generally have steep-pitched slate roofs, while those of Poitou have flat-pitched Roman tiles.  Richelieu's roofs are slate (ardoises) when on a grand house and roman tiles (tuiles rondes) on a humbler one.

seneschal |ˌsɛnɪʃ(ə)l| noun
1 historical the steward or major-domo of a medieval great house.
2 chiefly historical a governor or other administrative or judicial officer.
ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French, from medieval Latin seniscalus, from a Germanic compound of words meaning ‘old’ and ‘servant.’

Richelieu was formerly in the sénéchaussé of Saumur to the east, in Anjou.  This area was a rump of the larger area separated from Saumur by the area around the powerful mediaeval town of Loudun, which had its own administration.  Some alliegences were to Saumur, some to Tours, some even to Poitiers!

In the reign of Louis XIV Richelieu was included in the Généralité of Tours and thus within Touraine, but this seems to have been changed at one point to the Généralité of Saumur a least in some respects.

We are all confused.  HELP.....

The dates of the buildings within the Cité Idéale of Richelieu

It is hard to find detailed maps of the inner plan of the town of Richelieu.  This one, taken from 'Richelieu, le Château et la Cité Idéale' by eminent historian Christine Toulier, published in 2005  (see 'Interesting Links: Book 1' to the left. Order a copy!) is a marked-up version of the 19th century town cadastral plan showing the results of her enquiries about the dates of the properties. The research was made in 1987.

Dark red: completed by 1642

Orange: 17th century

Pink: 18th century

Black: now demolished.

It seems that it took quite a long time for the plots to be filled up, although the inner vistas were obviously completed by the 1640s and remain extraordinarily complete today.  Can't we find a 'swash-buckler' that needs a complete town as a film set?  Come back Errol Flynn....

An aerial view of the old place du Marché layout

This aerial view shows the old layout of the place du Marché as it was up to September 2006, before the recently completed re-ordering.  The layout seems bizarre now that we have become familiar with the newly changed space that removed the central crossing of tarmac streets to create the open spacious pedestrian square of today.  One can see here how the old lime trees had 'a few teeth missing'. 

In contrast to the other twin square, the place des Religieuses, the old layout of the place du Marché at least did not have a set of traffic lights at the intersection!  The tyranny of the motor-car!

One of the more curious effects of the new layout however concerns the sense of size of these two identically-dimensioned squares.  It is almost unbelievable that the as-yet-unchanged place des Religieuses and the place du marché are in fact the same size.  It seems to the viewer as if the place du Marché dimensions are at least 50% bigger.  

As the both the Cardinal and Archit. Lemercier meant the two squares to be conceptual and layout twins, 'one for the King and one for the Cardinal', we hope the Maire and Conseil Général of Indre-et-Loire will get a move on and change the other square to match the now ravishing place du Marché.

At present in the early days of spring 2008, we look forward to the first sight of green-leaved hornbeam trees ringing the new square layout. for the first time.

thanks to Marie-Pierre Terrien for the suggestion, and Jean-Louis Laurence for the aerial photo.

Engraving of the town by Matthäus Merian from 1657

An engraving of the half-completed town from a huge and varied collection of views by Swiss-German engraver Matthäus Merian the elder (1593 - 1650), and the younger (1621-1687) his son, called "Topographiae Galliae oder Beschreib. und Contrafaitung deß Mächtigen Königreichs Frankreich. Fünfter Theil" of 1657, printed in Frankfurt am Main by Caspar Merian (son of Matthäus Merian the younger).
It seems unlikely that the engravers had actually visited the town, but rather based their depictions on other illustrations & engravings, maybe those Isräel Sylvestre, Perelle or Marot.

The portrait above is of Matthäus Merian the elder.

Markets in and around Richelieu

Shopping or just browsing in markets is part of the magic of being in France. 

Richelieu has a beautiful 1630 timber-roofed halle building which is host to most of the food stalls in the twice-weekly market. On Mondays, as well as meat, cheese, fish and fruit and vegetables in the market hall, the Market Square has a large selection of non-food stalls, which on a busy week can occupy the whole of the Square with varied goods on sale ranging from beds, fabrics, clothes and shoes to hardware. The Friday Market is mostly food, and there is usually a queue at the fish stalls where oysters sell 'like hot cakes'. There are also plant and flower stalls. I always watch what vegetable and salad plants are for sale, either to buy, or to give a good idea of what grows well in the area. If you buy flowers or house plants for a present, they will gift wrap them for you at no extra charge.

On the first Monday of each month there is a market in nearby Lencloître (24 km south).  This means that Richelieu's market is very small that day; all the traders go to Lencloître where the market is truely HUGE. You can buy virtually anything there, including live animals (chicks, geese, hamsters, sheep, goats, donkeys etc.), tractors and general merchandise. There are food and wine stalls dotted around, and we were amazed/amused/appalled(?) at one food stall selling barbecued eels, starting with the live items wriggling. This is definitely worth a visit, even if you don’t need to buy anything.

Other regular markets are at Chinon (21 km north), on Thursdays, and Châtellerault (30 km south), on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
Les Halles at Châtellerault is the permanent market - a beautifully maintained building with a large variety of top quality foods. 

A more unusual local market is the nocturnal one held below ground level in caves near La-Tour-Saint-Gelin (9 km east). Held on a Friday evening (possibly the second Friday most months), and advertised widely by the roadsides around Richelieu, it is worth the effort to follow the signs and find this unusual setting.  There are plenty of stalls offering tastings, as well as a main bar and eating area where you can have a set meal. 

Of course, there are the seasonal markets, too. As well as the Christmas markets and the truffle market, look out for farms which open to sell asparagus in the season from mid-April to mid -June.  Some also sell their own honey, vegetables and even oil.

Happy shopping!

(thanks to Susie for this entry & pictures from Lencloître Monday Market)

Mousquetaires de Richelieu - Puy du Fou, la Vendée.

Mousquetaires de richelieu
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