Château de Bouges, França

O Château de Bouges é uma mansão do século XVIII na cidade de Bouges-le-Château, no departamento de Indre, na França, no Vale do Loire. É classificado como um monumento histórico e os jardins são listados pelo Ministério da Cultura como entre os Jardins Notáveis ​​da França. O castelo e os jardins estão abertos ao público.

O castelo tem um parque de oitenta hectares, que inclui um jardim paisagístico, um arboreto, um jardim floral criado em 1920, grandes estufas e um jardim francês formal. Também inclui grandes estábulos que foram usados ​​mais tarde como garagens pelos últimos proprietários.

Não se pode deixar Bouges sem percorrer o parque de 80 ha, plantado com numerosas espécies de árvores, com alguma essência rara (tulipier, carvalho vermelho americano, liquidambar). Dentro dos edifícios principais, você também encontrará uma importante coleção relacionada à caça e aos cavalos.

Este lugar com uma aparência ainda habitada e a beleza dos arredores são constitutivos do encanto deste castelo. Seja qual for a temporada, você será bem-vinda no castelo com flores de jardim frescas.

História:
Bouges era originalmente uma casa senhorial rural com um castelo fortificado. Em 1759, Claude Charles François Leblanc de Marnaval, coletor de impostos geral de Louis XV, comprou a terra e logo substituiu o antigo castelo por uma elegante construção de “estilo italiano”.

O novo e elegante edifício era uma demonstração da ambição de seu rico mestre de ferro, que conseguiu fazer seu nome no mundo das finanças parisiense e recentemente ganhou um título nobre (através do casamento). Seu estilo de vida foi objeto de estupidez e ciúme. Cerca de 12 anos depois, ele se viu em falência e seu castelo foi recuperado e vendido.

Durante o século XIX, o site passou por vários proprietários, incluindo o Príncipe de Talleyrand.

A maioria do trabalho de transformação no castelo foi conduzido por Henry Viguier, diretor de uma grande loja parisiense e sua esposa Renée, de uma rica família de draperes. Eles reviviram a propriedade instalando peças impressionantes, em harmonia com os arredores. Eles também modernizaram o castelo, introduzindo eletricidade, aquecimento e água corrente.

A compra de Bouges deu a Henry Viguier a oportunidade de se dedicar ao seu amor pelo equestre, e ele usou seus cavalos para todos os aspectos de suas atividades diárias (caça, equitação, piqueniques, viagens e compras de suprimentos). Ele possuía um estábulo de cavalos de corrida e gostava particularmente de carruagens atraentes. Os estábulos, saddleries e sala de transporte oferecem uma representação particularmente boa desta paixão.

Renée Viguier, enquanto isso, se apaixonou pelas flores, e esse motivo recorrente pode ser visto em toda a decoração interior do castelo. O casal transformou a horta existente em um jardim de flores (o “jardin bouquetier”), e plantas exóticas foram instaladas na grande estufa. Eles também restauraram as plantas e paisagens nos jardins formais ingleses e franceses criados pelas Duchênes sob a propriedade anterior.

Em 1967, sem descendentes, o casal saiu da propriedade e sua coleção para a Caisse nationale des monuments historiques et des sites (agora o Centre des Monuments Nationaux). O desejo expresso de Henry Viguier era que a propriedade deveria estar aberta ao público e que a renda gerada deveria ser usada para manter e restaurar a propriedade.

Architecture
The Château de Bouges was attributed without proof to Ange-Jacques Gabriel on the basis of an approximate similarity with the Petit Trianon of Versailles built by the famous architect between 1762 and 1768 at exactly the same time, which is enough to make this highly unlikely attribution. It is now challenged by all authors.

The name “Gabriel” engraved on one of the pediments is probably only a graffiti due to one of the workers on the site, like that of “Fayeti” who overcomes it. The parish registers mention the burial in November 1767 of a certain Gabriel, apprentice of Louis Thonet, mason working at the castle, who is perhaps the one who engraved his name on the castle. Also mentioned in 1768 were Claude Vidard, carpenter, and François Le Neuf, “master carpenter at the château”. In 1770, François Le Neuf, the locksmith Antoine Favel and Jean Bardon attended the burial of the brother of the latter, described as “painter and gilder of the city of Bourges”.

The deliberations of the trustee quote the claims of Richard Colasse, master roofer in Paris, and Mathieu La Chaussée, master carpenter in Paris, “for the cover of a new dome”, made in 1778 according to the indications of Sieur Vittard, architect. We do not know anything about it and we can not attribute to it with certainty the whole project of Bouges, in which we also found similarities with the hotel Bertrand in Châteauroux, contemporary work of the architect engineer Martin Bouchet.

Exteriors
If Bouges is undeniably a very neat construction, it does not present the architectural subtleties of the Petit Trianon. On the other hand, its pavilion organization evokes certain Parisian hotels like the hotel Peyrenc de Moras and also the castle of Marly. In the second half of the eighteenth century, there are obvious similarities with the castle of Canon (Calvados), refitted in 1770 for Jean-Baptiste Elie de Beaumont.

The castle is a 28 x 21 meter rectangular massed building with nine bays on the main façades and five bays on the side façades. The main façades open one on the main courtyard and the other on the big perspective of the green carpet. Under a triangular pediment, the three central bays stand out in slight protrusion, forming a false fore-body, on a continuous base of refends answering the angles treated in bosses with slits. On the ground floor, this false front is pierced by three semicircular windows, including the entrance door which is accessed by a few steps of steps, and on the floor of three rectangular bays joined by a balcony supported by four consoles.

The median axis is also marked by the use of a triangular pediment, the use of continuous roofs and the use of a semicircular central bay on the ground floor, and rectangular on the first floor, framed by pierced or simulated bull’s eye. Each cross of the side façades is highlighted by a framing of flower beds that animates the walls of smooth stone.

The house is built in stone Villentrois. The separation between the two levels is marked by a simple strip and a prominent cornice, which make imperceptible the level between the ground floor and the first floor and the level of service rooms located on the second floor. The sculpture is limited to the pediments and consoles of the balconies, and to the systematic use of balusters to encircle the flowerbeds and to conceal the roof terrace that was crowned with a slate dome in the eighteenth century.

Interiors
Château de Bouges stands out thanks to the ingeniousness of its three-deep interior organization, which provides maximum opening to the outside by releasing the center of the building, occupied on the ground floor by a large vestibule connecting the hall of honor at the games fair. The other reception rooms are arranged on the ground floor with the necessary clearances and service rooms, the grand staircase being rejected on the side in the thickness of the vestibule. Upstairs, the right end of the staircase leads to a central void around which develop the master apartments and guest rooms, five in number. The large windows are equipped with interior shutters and are skilfully divided to give day to mezzanine. The kitchens, laundry, cellars and storage are in the basement.

The creation, most probably at the end of the nineteenth century only, of a skylight illuminated by a skylight above the central void, introduced a very original second luminous axis by drawing an interesting part from the original layout.

Park
The estate comprises on 80 hectares a landscaped park, an arboretum, a garden bouquetier created in 1920, large greenhouses and French gardens of one hectare redrawn in the last century by the Duchêne father and son. The park also offers boxwood borders and cone-cut yews, all surrounded by a double line of lime trees. The perspective of the basin leads to the water buffet of the nymphaeum, in the center of the lawn rises a carved group of white marble representing Hercules. The garden is composed of two main axes, at the intersection of which is a circular basin. The large greenhouse is home to some rare or exotic plant species.

The English-style park covers 80 hectares of liquidambar trees, tulip trees, beeches, berberis, sumacs … The park is labeled Logo displaying two half silhouettes of trees Remarkable garden.

Sumptuous stables installed in the common, home to the horse-drawn carriages used by its last owners.

Protection
Château de Bouges has been classified as a historic monument since September 7, 2001. This concerns the château, its outbuildings, its gardens, its park, as well as the buildings and the fence walls and the driveway. ‘arrival. This decree canceled the previous protection measures: the decree of classification as historical monuments of December 28, 1961 and the orders of inscription under the historic monuments of October 21, 1944 and March 3, 1997.

Filmography
The castle and its park served as a setting for certain scenes from Yves Angelo’s film Le Colonel Chabert (1994) with Gérard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant.