Hôtel des Tournelles

Not to be confused with the Château de la Tournelle.

The Hôtel des Tournelles in the 14th century

The hôtel des Tournelles was a now-demolished collection of buildings in Paris built from the 14th century onwards, north of what is now place des Vosges. It is named after its many 'tournelles' or little towers.

It was long owned by the kings of France, though they did not often live there. Henry II of France died there in 1559 of wounds received in a joust. After his death, his widow Catherine de Médici abandoned the building (by then old-fashioned) and it was turned into a gunpowder magazine, then sold to finance the construction of a palace in the Italian style, which became known as the Tuileries.

Site and description

The district around the Hôtel des Tournelles in 1550

At the start of the 15th century, the whole district around it formed a huge rectangle marked out by rue Saint-Antoine, rue des Tournelles, rue de Turenne and rue Saint-Gilles, which was broken from within by the royal estate's park. During the English occupation of Paris from 1420 to 1436, the Duke of Bedford extended it by purchasing eight and a half acres from the nuns of Sainte-Catherine for 200 livres 16 sous, thus extending the property as far as the fortified wall of Paris, then situated on the site of what is now boulevard Richard Lenoir. This extension was annulled in 1437 after the English defeat. The main entrance to the hôtel was at the bottom of what is now impasse Guéménée. It was said to be able to support 6,000 people.

Copy of a gate to St. Nicolas des Champs

Like the Hôtel Saint-Pol, the hôtel des Tournelles was made up of a collection of buildings spread over an estate of more than 20 acres (8.1 ha), including twenty chapels, several pleasure grounds, ovens and twelve galleries housing the Duke of Bedford's famous galerie des courges (so-called due to the painted green squashes or courges decoarting its walls – under its tiled roof his arms, devices and heraldry were shown). It also included a maze called 'Dedalus', two parks planted with trees, six kitchen gardens and a ploughed field. The council chamber was notable for the magnificence of its decoration. Three other rooms bore the names salle des Écossais, salle de brique and salle pavée. One part of the hôtel des Tournelles with the name Logis du Roi had an entrance decorated with the French coat of arms, painted by Jean de Boulogne, known as Jean de Paris. In 1464, Louis XI built a gallery there which connected the house to the Hôtel-Neuf of madame d'Étampes, across rue Saint-Antoine. He also built an observatory for his doctor Jacques Coitier. Meangeries based on those at the hôtel Saint-Paul were later added to house some of the animals previously held at the hôtel Saint-Paul. New specimens were imported from Africa, such as lions, giving the enclosures their name d’hôtel des lions du Roi.

No remains survive of the hôtel besides a copy of one of its gates, which forms the south gate of église Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, and some caves buried below buildings in the district.

History

Charles VI

At the start of the 14th century, the building that became the Hôtel des Tournelles was merely a house facing the hôtel Saint-Pol. Pierre d'Orgemont, seigneur de Chantilly and chancellor of France and the Dauphiné under Charles VI, or his eldest son Pierre, rebuilt it in 1388 – it had been left to the younger Pierre in 1387. This house may have formerly been the property of Jean d'Orgemont, his presumed father. On 19 March 1387 Pierre d'Orgemont divided his lands among his ten children, leaving the maison des Tournelles to his eldest son Pierre, bishop of Paris, who already lived there. After his father's death in 1389, the bishop sold the house on 16 May 1402 for 140,000 écus d’or, to the duc de Berry, brother of Charles V. In 1404 the duc de Berry ceded it to his nephew Louis, the duc d’Orléans and younger brother of Charles VI, in exchange for the hôtel de Gixé on rue de Jouy. The duc d’Orléans was assassinated on 23 November 1407 and the hôtel passed to his heirs before becoming the property of Charles VI, who lived there from 1417 onwards. The house thus took the name of the Maison royale des Tournelles.

Louis XII

Thanks to the Treaty of Troyes, the English entered Paris on 18 November 1420. After Charles VI's death on 22 October 1422 in Paris, the hôtel was sequestered before becoming the main residence of John of Lancaster, the Duke of Bedford, younger brother of Henry V of England and regent for the kingdom of France until the majority of his nephew Henry VI. In 1436, after the English left Paris, Charles VII gave the hôtel to his Orléans cousins. It thus passed to John of Orléans, count of Angoulême, and was temporarily renamed the hôtel d’Angoulême (not to be confused with the later Hôtel d'Angoulême Lamoignon) until his death in 1467, upon which it passed to his widow Marguerite de Rohan. In 1486 she left it to her son Charles of Orléans, father of Francis I of France, thus making it a royal residence once again. In 1563 it was still called the "hôtel des Tournelles et d'Angoulème".

Different kings of this era stayed for short or long periods at the hôtel – Louis XI made a few brief stays there:

Item, the following Thursday [1 June 1440], the Delphin [the future Louis XI] came to Paris and was lodged at the ostel [sic] des Tournelles, hard by the porte Sainct-Anthoine, and stayed only one night, not showing himself in Paris, nor his father the king coming either...

Fleeing his coronation festivities, the new king took refuge there on Tuesday 1 September 1461 after dinner but had already left for Tours by 25 September.

Nor did Louis's successors Charles VIII of France and Louis XII of France stay there much, though the latter did die there on 1 January 1515. Francis I of France did not live there, preferring the château de Fontainebleau, the Louvre and the castles on the River Loire. The Hôtel des Tournelles was used as a residence by his mother Louise of Savoy then by his mistress Anne de Pisseleu, a tradition repeated by Henry II of France when he made it Diane de Poitiers's residence. In 1524 the magician Cornélius Agrippa lived there under the name Agrippa de Nettesheim, as doctor and astrologer to Louise de Savoie, to whom he made dead and living people appear.

Henry II on his deathbed at the hôtel des Tournelles

The hôtel saw several lavish and unusual festivals, such as the "danse macabre" on 23 August 1451 before Charles, Duke of Orléans. Henry II celebrated his coronation there in 1547 and then the signing of the Treaties of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559. The last festival held there was also in 1559, to mark the double marriage of Élisabeth de France to Philip II of Spain and of the king's sister Marguerite de France to the duke of Savoy. On this occasion, a tournament was organised on 29 June on rue Saint-Antoine, the widest street in Paris at the time and thus known as the La Grant rue St Anthoine, with the same dimensions as in the present day. During a joust in front of the hôtel de Sully (level with what is now number 62), Henry II was seriously wounded by an accidental lance thrust by Gabriel de Lorges, count of Montgommery, captain of the king's Scottish guard. Moved to the hôtel des Tournelles, the king died there on 10 July 1559 after terrible agony, despite attempts to save him by the famous surgeon Ambroise Paré and the surgeon to the king of Spain Andreas Vesalius.

Catherine de Médici, an Italian princess who had grown up in Roman palaces, disliked the Hôtel des Tournelles's medieval appearance and so took Henry's death as a pretext to sell it off. Gaining total power as regent to their young sons, she turned it into an arsenal and then had it closed and demolished. On 28 January 1563, in the name of her son Charles IX of France, she issued letters patent ordering the demolition. This took place in stages and financed her major works on the more modern royal residences in Paris, particularly on the Madrid and the Tuileries. Some of the materials were reused in the construction of this palace. The stables were reused to create the important Marché-aux-chevaux or horse market, where two thousand horses were sold every Saturday. Certain parcels of land from the Hôtel's estate were sold off, though a large estate remained for use in military training. It also became a traditional site for bloody duels – on 27 April 1578, at 5 am, three favourites of Henry III of France beat three favourites of the duke of Guise in a duel there, with all six men ending up killed or seriously wounded. In January 1589 the estate was used to exercise the mercenaries charged with defending Paris against Henry IV of France.

Henry IV

In August 1603, Henry IV tried to re-use part of the Hôtel's buildings to create a silk, gold and silver factory, bringing in 200 Italian workers for this purpose, but the attempt failed. Finally, on 4 March 1604, he issued an edict instructing his minister Sully to measure out the site. He donated a parcel of 6,000 toises (yards) to his main noblemen, who built pavilions there, on the condition that they stuck to the layout, materials and main dimensions laid down by the architects Androuet du Cerceau and Claude Chastillon. On 29 March 1605 Henry wrote to Sully:

My friend, I pray you to remember what we talked of together lately, of this place where I wish that I wish to be built before the lodge which serves as a horse market for manufactures, to the end that if you have not marked out there – for renting the rest of the other places to and rent for the rest, it is doubtless that they will be unfaithful and I pray you to give me the news.

Thus the place Royale, later known as the place des Vosges, was born.

Bibliography

• Jacques Hillairet, Connaissance du vieux Paris, Editions Princesse, 1956, p. 28
• F. Lazare, Dictionnaire administratif et historique des rues de Paris et de ses monuments, F. Lazare, 1844/1849, pp. 600–602
• J-A Dulaure, Histoire de Paris, Gabriel Roux, 1853, p. 189
• Gilette Ziegler, Histoire secrète de Paris, Stock, 1967, p. 69
• Le Magasin Pittoresque, 1851, pp. 95–96
• Le Magasin Pittoresque, 1907, pp. 332–334
• G. Kugelman, Les rues de Paris, Louis Lurine, 1851
• Giorgo Perrini, Paris, deux mille ans pour un joyau, Jean de Bonnot, 1992

External links

• http://fr.structurae.de/projects/data/index.cfm?id=p00570