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| a grand piano nobile |
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| a humble dwelling for the lower classes |
***
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
Careless beauty and decay
More details of the statue of the cardinal...
With this second post on the subject, we take a bit more time with the statue of the cardinal duc, Armand-Jean du Plessis, the founder of so many French activities and organisations that have endured to our day. The statue is located on the place that sits between his château's domainal parc to the south and his model town to the north.
He poses giving a cardinal's blessing to the viewer with his right hand, while holding the document of foundation of the Académie Française (dated as 1635) in his left.
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| the all-seeing, all-knowing statesman |
The statue has several 'credits' attached to it.
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| the sculptor's credit 1828 |
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| the relocation of the statue in 1932 |
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| the Second Regiment of the Marines |
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| dedications from the Second Regiment of the Marines |
- The sculptor - C(laude) Ramey, père - Dijon, dated 1828
- The inauguration of the statue in Richelieu 17 July 1932, probably as part of the bequest of the domainal parc to the Sorbonne (of which Armand-Jean was the first rector, and in whose chapel he rests to this day) by the eigth and last duke. It had formerly been located on the Pont Neuf of Henri IV in Paris for the period 1828-1932.
- Two plaques of the Second Regiment of the Marines to their first Chef de Corps, one from 1932(?) and the other from the Lieutenants of the Second of the Marine, dated 9 December 1995 to their founding 'father'. The old strategist and pupil of Pluvinel's equestreian & military academy is not forgotten!
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| the cardinal up closer |
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| the foundation of the Academie Française |
***
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Estate agents - when the music stops...
There were, until recently, three estate agents in the Place du Marché in Richelieu who all offered properties to visitors and locals.
Thiot was there first on the northern side of the square; they offered in addition restoration services to those who had fallen in love with one of Touraine's tumbledown delights. But the years rolled on, and M. et Mme. Thiot have gone to their retirement. The old agency is now unoccupied and sad.
The second property agent, well known to the Abbé Henri Proust, Touraine Immo, seems to have closed up shop, again leaving an unoccupied office, this time on the eastern face of the square.
Then, and thirdly, the shop of Archard Immobilier on the eastern side, this time run by two rosbifs, and reflecting the strong UK interest in French country properties in the 2000-2010 period, has closed, maybe because of the financial crisis has taken the heat out of the sales of upmarket properties.
But nature and commerce abhorr a vacuum and a new property agent, Richelieu Immobilier, has now sprung up to meet demand.
Below pictures of their new office and the information in the window.
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| The new office in Route de Loudun |
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| Details and contacts |
The town's notaire, Maître Pierre Gravel continues to sell properties, as is normal in the French property system, in addition to supervising on behalf of the French State the transfer of most local property ownerships from seller to buyer.
***
Friday, 1 July 2011
The cardinal duc scrubs up well...
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| the statue of the cardinal duc on the place Cardinal, in front of the porte de Châtellerault |
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| before... |
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| after...
This newly-cleaned statue stands between the cité idéale and the domainal parc and château.
It was carved in 1828 by sculptor Claude Ramey (29 Oct 1754 - 4 June 1838)
and formerly located on the Pont de la Concorde in Paris.
Now maintained by the French 2nd Regiment of Marines
of whom A-J d P was
http://inandaroundbraye.blogspot.com/ *** |
Wednesday, 29 June 2011
Abbé Henri Proust's garden inspiration
...click on the picture to see the details within...
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"What do you think of my new raised beds, Beatrice?" by Pieter Van Avont (1600-1652) |
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
The 'Carte de Cassini' - around Richelieu
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| The entire area of the Carte de Cassini |
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| the cité idéale - click on the maps to enlarge |
After the publication of the 'Carte Générale' on 18 sheets at a scale of 1:870,000 in 1746/47, and now on the request of Louis XV, César-Francois Cassini (1714-1784) conceived a much more detailed map at a scale of 1:86,400 (1 line for 100 toises (194.9 m) = 2.256mm. The field work and engraving of the maps onto copper undertaken starting in 1750 were not completed until 1815. Many additions or corrections, mainly focusing on the lines of communication, were made to the engraving plates between 1798 and 1812.
During the summer of 1756, Cassini presents the sheet Beauvais 2 to Louis XV. The king admires the precision, but the announces to the cartographer that the Royal Treasury can not help the company any further.
Financial support, essential to the continuation of the work of the Cassini, is provided by a new Association of fifty members, which include the King, Queen and the Cassini family. This Association covers 20% of expenditures. Sales of sheets, subscriptions, and participation of the Généralités and contracts with the Pays d'États allow Cassini to keep the balance of accounts. Along with the publication of the map sheets of the Carte Générale, contributions from provincial expenditures (38%) lead to the publication of special maps of the Languedoc, Burgundy, Bresse and Provence.
In 1793, the revolutionary Convention nationale vote the transfer of the 165 sheets completed to the Depôt de la Guerre. They become an important mechanism for the cutting of France into the new system of départéments.
The map making company of Jaques' son, César-François Cassini de Thury, was continued in 1815 by his son Jean-Dominique, Comte de Cassini (1748-1845).
The Cassini map consists of a collection of 180 sheets, 154 in the format 104 cm x 73 cm and 26 sheets of various other sizes. The copper plates are kept by the National Geographic Institute (IGN) that administrate and publish the print-outs in black and white.
The four corners of each sheet mark the distances in toises to the Meridian of Paris and its Perpendicular.
At a scale of 1:86,400 and toise worth 1.949 metres, the size of the field of each map is 77,961 x 48,726 metres (in Cassini projection) for a full sheet. |
| round and about Richelieu |
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| the Chinonnais, the Indre and the Loire |
***
Tuesday, 21 June 2011
Sarko drops the proposed new property tax on secondary homes
The old town of Richelieu attracts many purchasers of houses from abroad, as the pretty cité idéale does not offer many possibilities of comfortable employment to local sons and daughters, far as it is from the cities of Tours or Châtellerault with their job opportunities. Houses are quite cheap as a result.
Without these foreign buyers, who spend restoration money on the classic properties from wealth earned elsewhere, many of the houses located within the city's walls would be left to rot, as locals do not have either the funds or the inclination to take them on.
The new tax was to have been 20% of the valeur locative cadastral - notional rental value - of the houses per annum. As many of these properties are large, and the new property tax was to be based on these large areas, while little houses would only have attracted a smallish sum in addition to the impôts habitation et foncière already paid by second home owners, the large houses would have attracted new tax requests in the order of 2,000€ per annum. As existing local taxes are already quite steep on these large houses, it would have discouraged buyers and caused a reduction of prices and values.
So many second home owners can relax (for a while!)....
Also the Sarko administration has improved the position of property owners when the
Grim Reaper
comes to call
in the land of
CLICK HERE
comes to call
in the land of
 |
| Napoléon Bonaparte |
CLICK HERE
***
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
The Cartes de Trudaine of 1745 - 1780
The so-called 'Cartes de Trudaine' are a collection of three thousand maps of the various regions of France assembled by the metropolitan Ponts et Chausées in the years 1745 -1770.
The Atlas of Highways in France, called the 'Atlas Trudaine', constitute a unique and consistent sixty-two volume collection of Atlases of maps, in all totalling over 3000 carefully hand drawn sheets, each tinted in watercolor. They are held in the French National Archives (formerly the Centre Historique des Archives Nationales (CHAN)) in Paris. Made between 1745 and 1780 on the orders of Charles Daniel Trudaine, the Director of Ponts et Chausées, they show all bridges and roads, existing and proposed, with their immediate surroundings that were within the twenty-two Généralités des Pays d'Élections governed by royal Intendants. The Pays d'États (Burgundy, Provence, Languedoc and Brittany) and the Pays d'Imposition (border regions conquered by Louis XIV) are excluded from coverage of the maps, but the Généralité of Metz has three atlases and Haut-Cambrésis three atlases as well.
These atlases are a valuable and highly useful documentation of the eighteenth-century French landscape. They include representations of populated places, woods, streams and roads, isolated buildings (crosses, shrines, castles, mills, factories, quarries ...), and the the sites of all works of art close to roads or actually built upon them.
Below, we show three of these maps of the region around Richelieu, it being located in the Généralité of Tours.
- The Cité Idéale and château de Richelieu
- The road from Richelieu to Champigny-sur-Veude
- The town plan of Champigny-sur-Veude
The maps show the state of the locality in the lifetime of the third duc de Richelieu, Maréchal Armand de Vignerot du Plessis
As these maps are a record of roads and bridges between various locations, they cannot sustain the etiquette of 'North upwards'; In the Richelieu map East is upwards; in the road to Champigny the East remains upwards; in the Champigny map South is upwards.
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| The town and castle of Richelieu |
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| the five kilometre road between Richelieu and Champigny-sur-Veude |
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| The town of Champigny-sur-Veude |
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| the Généralités of 18th century France |
***
this post dedicated to Liezel, a researcher for criticalproductive at Cornell University, with many thanks for the inspiration...
***
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
the cardinal duc on the dike at La Rochelle
Henri-Paul Motte painted this well-known history picture in 1881 showing the cardinal duc on the dike that he ordered to be constructed across the mouth of the bay at La Rochelle. By screening the fortified town from support from the sea - and the dastardly rosbifs led by the Duke of Buckingham - he ensured the siege of the town in 1627-28 was successful. The calvinist Hugenot Hanseatic town, a 'state within a state', was brought to its knees and finally capitulated to the King's forces.
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| one of the battle pictures at the town museum portrays the siege of La Rochelle |
look at the map opposite for the location...
***
Thursday, 9 June 2011
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.
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| The main front of the hotel on the place du Marché |
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| The façade onto the Grande Rue, showing the part under renovation. |
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| The hotel finally occupies the entire hôtel particulier, 2 Grande Rue. |
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| the new rear façade to rue du Chantier, next to the Porte de Châtellerault. |
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| 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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