The Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye () is a former royal palace in the

commune A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or comune or other derivations may also refer to: Administrative-territorial entities * Commune (administrative division), a municipality or township ** Communes of ...

Saint-Germain-en-Laye Saint-Germain-en-Laye () is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, from the centre of Paris. Inhabitants are called ''Saint-Germanois'' or ''Saint-Ge ...

, in the ''

département In the administrative divisions of France, the department (french: département, ) is one of the three levels of government under the national level ("territorial collectivity, territorial collectivities"), between the regions of France, admin ...

'' of

Yvelines Yvelines () is a department in the western part of the Île-de-France region in Northern France. In 2019, it had a population of 1,448,207.Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, France. Today, it houses the ''

musée d'Archéologie nationale The National Archaeological Museum (French: Musée d'Archéologie nationale) is a major French archaeology museum, covering pre-historic times to the Merovingian period (450–750 CE). It is housed in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the ' ...

'' (National Museum of Archaeology).

History

12th–13th centuries

The first castle, named the ''Grand Châtelet'', was built on the site by Louis VI in 1124. The castle was expanded by

Louis IX Louis IX (25 April 1214 – 25 August 1270), commonly known as Saint Louis or Louis the Saint, was King of France from 1226 to 1270, and the most illustrious of the Direct Capetians. He was crowned in Reims at the age of 12, following the d ...

in the 1230s. Louis IX's chapelle Saint Louis at the castle belongs to the

Rayonnant In French Gothic architecture, Rayonnant () is the period from about the mid-13th century to mid-14th century. It was characterized by a shift away from the High Gothic search for increasingly large size toward more spatial unity, refined decora ...

phase of

French Gothic architecture French Gothic architecture is an architectural style which emerged in France in 1140, and was dominant until the mid-16th century. The most notable examples are the great Gothic cathedrals of France, including Notre-Dame Cathedral, Reims Cathedra ...

. A 1238 charter of Louis IX instituting a regular religious service at the chapel is the first mention of a chapel having been built at the royal castle. This was a ''Sainte Chapelle'', to house a relic of the

Crown of Thorns According to the New Testament, a woven crown of thorns ( or grc, ἀκάνθινος στέφανος, akanthinos stephanos, label=none) was placed on the head of Jesus during the events leading up to his crucifixion. It was one of the in ...

or the

True Cross The True Cross is the cross upon which Jesus was said to have been crucified, particularly as an object of religious veneration. There are no early accounts that the apostles or early Christians preserved the physical cross themselves, althoug ...

. Its plan and architecture prefigure the major

Sainte-Chapelle The Sainte-Chapelle (; en, Holy Chapel) is a royal chapel in the Gothic style, within the medieval Palais de la Cité, the residence of the Kings of France until the 14th century, on the Île de la Cité in the River Seine in Paris, France. ...

which Saint Louis built within the

Palais de la Cité The Palais de la Cité (), located on the Île de la Cité in the Seine River in the centre of Paris, is a major historic building that was the residence of the Kings of France from the sixth century until the 14th century, and has been the center ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

between 1240 and 1248. Both buildings were built by Louis's favourite architect Pierre de Montreuil, who adapted the architectural formulae invented at Saint Germain for use in Paris. A single nave ends in a chevet, with almost all the wall areas filled by tall narrow glass windows, between which are large exterior

buttress A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral ( ...

es. The

ogive An ogive ( ) is the roundly tapered end of a two-dimensional or three-dimensional object. Ogive curves and surfaces are used in engineering, architecture and woodworking. Etymology The earliest use of the word ''ogive'' is found in the 13th c ...

s of the vault rest on columns between the bays and the column bases are placed behind a low isolated arcade. The building can thus be open and empty of all internal supports. This large number of windows is also enabled by the ''pierre armée'' technique, with metal elements built into the structure of the walls to ensure the stones' stability. The west wall is adorned by a large Gothic rose window in the

Gothic style. It was in this chapel in 1238 that

Baldwin II of Constantinople Baldwin II, also known as Baldwin of Courtenay (french: Baudouin de Courtenay; late 1217 – October 1273), was the last Latin Emperor ruling from Constantinople. Biography Baldwin II was born in Constantinople (the only Latin emperor to be bo ...

presented Louis with the relic of the crown of thorns and, though they were intended for the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, they were housed here until the Paris chapel was consecrated in April 1248. The castle was burned by the

Black Prince Edward of Woodstock, known to history as the Black Prince (15 June 1330 – 8 June 1376), was the eldest son of King Edward III of England, and the heir apparent to the English throne. He died before his father and so his son, Richard II, suc ...

in 1346; of it, only the

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

chapel remains from the site's medieval phase. This ''Château Vieux'' was rebuilt by

Charles V Charles V may refer to: * Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500–1558) * Charles V of Naples (1661–1700), better known as Charles II of Spain * Charles V of France (1338–1380), called the Wise * Charles V, Duke of Lorraine (1643–1690) * Infan ...

in the 1360s on the old foundations.

16th–18th centuries

The oldest parts of the current château were reconstructed by

Francis I Francis I or Francis the First may refer to: * Francesco I Gonzaga (1366–1407) * Francis I, Duke of Brittany (1414–1450), reigned 1442–1450 * Francis I of France (1494–1547), King of France, reigned 1515–1547 * Francis I, Duke of Saxe-Lau ...

in 1539, and have subsequently been expanded several times. On 10 July 1547 a political rivalry came to a head in a bloody game here. Against the odds, Guy Chabot, 7th baron de

Jarnac Jarnac (; ; Saintongese: ''Jharnat'') is a commune in the Charente department, southwestern France.François de Vivonne, seigneur de la Chasteigneraie, giving rise to the coup de Jarnac. Henry II built a separate new château nearby, to designs by

Philibert de l'Orme Philibert de l'Orme () (3-9 June 1514 – 8 January 1570) was a French architect and writer, and one of the great masters of French Renaissance architecture. His surname is also written De l'Orme, de L'Orme, or Delorme. Biography Early care ...

. It stood at the crest of a slope, which was shaped, under the direction of Étienne du Pérac into three massive descending terraces and narrower subsidiary mediating terraces, which were linked by divided symmetrical stairs and ramps and extended a single axis that finished at the edge of the

Seine ) , mouth_location = Le Havre/Honfleur , mouth_coordinates = , mouth_elevation = , progression = , river_system = Seine basin , basin_size = , tributaries_left = Yonne, Loing, Eure, Risle , tributarie ...

; the design took many cues from the

Villa Lante Villa Lante is a Mannerist garden of surprise in Bagnaia, Viterbo, central Italy, attributed to Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola. Villa Lante did not become so known until it passed to Ippolito Lante Montefeltro della Rovere, Duke of Bomarzo, in the 1 ...

Bagnaia Bagnaia may refer to: Places * Bagnaia, Anghiari, a village in the province of Arezzo, Italy *Bagnaia, Livorno, a village in the province of Livorno, Italy * Bagnaia, Perugia, a village in the province of Perugia The Province of Perugia ( it, P ...

. "Étienne du Pérac had spent a long time in Italy, and one manifestation of his interest in gardens of this type is his well-known view of the

Villa d'Este The Villa d'Este is a 16th-century villa in Tivoli, near Rome, famous for its terraced hillside Italian Renaissance garden and especially for its profusion of fountains. It is now an Italian state museum, and is listed as a UNESCO World Herita ...

, engraved in 1573." The gardens laid out at Saint-Germain-en-Laye were among a half-dozen gardens introducing the Italian garden style to France that laid the groundwork for the

French formal garden The French formal garden, also called the (), is a style of garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. Its epitome is generally considered to be the Gardens of Versailles designed during the 17th century by the ...

. Unlike the

parterre A ''parterre'' is a part of a formal garden constructed on a level substrate, consisting of symmetrical patterns, made up by plant beds, low hedges or coloured gravels, which are separated and connected by paths. Typically it was the part of ...

s that were laid out in casual relation to existing châteaux, often on difficult sites originally selected for defensive reasons, these new gardens extended the central axis of a symmetrical building façade in rigorously symmetrical axial designs of patterned parterres, gravel walks, fountains and basins, and formally planted

bosquet In the French formal garden, a ''bosquet'' (French, from Italian ''bosco'', "grove, wood") is a formal plantation of trees in a wide variety of forms, some open at the bottom and others not. At a minimum a bosquet can be five trees of identical s ...

s; they began the tradition that reached its apex after 1650 in the gardens of André Le Nôtre. According to

Claude Mollet Claude Mollet (ca. 1564 – shortly before 1649), ''premier jardinier du Roy'' — first gardener to three French kings, Henri IV, Louis XIII and the young Louis XIV — was a member of the Mollet dynasty of French garden designers in th ...

's ''Théâtre des plans et jardinage'' the parterres were laid out in 1595 for Henry IV by Mollet, trained at Anet and the progenitor of a dynasty of royal gardeners. One of the parterre designs by Mollet at Saint-Germain-en-Laye was illustrated in

Olivier de Serres Olivier de Serres (; 1539–1619) was a French author and soil scientist whose '' Théâtre d'Agriculture'' (1600) was the accepted textbook of French agriculture in the 17th century. Biography Serres was born in 1539 at Villeneuve-de-Berg, ...

' (1600), but the ''Château Neuf'' and the whole of its spectacular series of terraces can be fully seen in an engraving after Alexandre Francini, 1614.

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Vers ...

was born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1638. One of du Pérac's retaining walls collapsed in 1660, and Louis undertook a renovation of the gardens in 1662. At his majority he established his court here in 1666, but he preferred the ''Château Vieux'': the ''Château Neuf'' was abandoned in the 1660s and demolished. From 1663 until 1682, when the king removed definitively to

Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...

, the team that he inherited from the unfortunate

Nicolas Fouquet Nicolas Fouquet, marquis de Belle-Île, vicomte de Melun et Vaux (27 January 1615 – 23 March 1680) was the Superintendent of Finances in France from 1653 until 1661 under King Louis XIV. He had a glittering career, and acquired enormous wealth ...

—

Louis Le Vau Louis Le Vau (1612 – 11 October 1670) was a French Baroque architect, who worked for Louis XIV of France. He was an architect that helped develop the French Classical style in the 17th Century.''Encyclopedia of World Biography''"Louis Le Vau", ...

, Jules Hardouin-Mansart and André Le Nôtre laboured to give the ancient pile a more suitable aspect. The gardens were remade by André Le Nôtre from 1669 to 1673, and include a 2.4 kilometre long stone terrace which provides a view over the valley of the

and, in the distance, Paris. Louis XIV turned the château over to King

James II of England James VII and II (14 October 1633 16 September 1701) was King of England and King of Ireland as James II, and King of Scotland as James VII from the death of his elder brother, Charles II, on 6 February 1685. He was deposed in the Glorious Re ...

after his exile from Britain in the

Glorious Revolution The Glorious Revolution; gd, Rèabhlaid Ghlòrmhor; cy, Chwyldro Gogoneddus , also known as the ''Glorieuze Overtocht'' or ''Glorious Crossing'' in the Netherlands, is the sequence of events leading to the deposition of King James II and ...

of 1688. King James lived in the château for thirteen years, and his daughter Louise-Marie Stuart was born in exile here in 1692. King James lies buried in the nearby Church of Saint-Germain; his wife Mary of Modena remained at the château until her death in 1718. Their son

James James is a common English language surname and given name: *James (name), the typically masculine first name James * James (surname), various people with the last name James James or James City may also refer to: People * King James (disambiguati ...

left the château in 1716, ultimately settling in Rome. Many Jacobites—supporters of the exiled Stuarts—remained at the château until the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...

, leaving in 1793. The Jacobites often consisted of former members of the Jacobite court, and the apartments left empty in the chateau by the Jacobite court pensioners upon their death, were often passed down to their widows and children by the caretaker of the chateau, Adrien Maurice, the Duke de Noailles. The Jacobite colony at Saint-Germain was still dominant in the 1750s, when they were however treated with increasing hostility. After the death of the Duke de Noailles in 1766, who had been responsible for the continuing Jacobite dominance because of his preference to give rooms to Jacobites, the British dominance quickly decreased and more French inhabitants were given lodgings in the chateau: the last member of the Stuart court was Theresa O'Connel, who died in 1778. The last descendants of the British Jacobites, by then mostly bearing French names, were evicted when the building was confiscated by the government during the French revolution in 1793.

19th–21st centuries

In the 19th century,

Napoleon I Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...

established his cavalry officers' training school here.

Napoleon III Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A nephew ...

initiated restoration of the castle by Eugène Millet, starting in 1862. It became the ''Musée des Antiquités Nationales'' (National Museum of Antiquities) in 1867, displaying the archeological objects of France. Auguste Lafollye took over responsibility for the restoration on Millet's death in 1879, continuing until 1889. His goal, and that of his successor

Honoré Daumet Pierre Jérôme Honoré Daumet (23 October 1826, Paris – 12 December 1911, Paris) was a French architect. Biography Daumet was the winner of the Prix de Rome in 1855, and in 1861 conducted a treasure-hunting expedition to Macedonia at the reque ...

, was to restore the French Renaissance style of

. On September 10, 1919 the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, ending hostilities between the

Allies of World War I The Allies of World War I, Entente Powers, or Allied Powers were a coalition of countries led by France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Italy, Japan, and the United States against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Em ...

and

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

, was signed at the château. During the German occupation (1940–44), the château served as the headquarters of the German Army in France. The museum was renamed the ''

Musée d'Archéologie Nationale The National Archaeological Museum (French: Musée d'Archéologie nationale) is a major French archaeology museum, covering pre-historic times to the Merovingian period (450–750 CE). It is housed in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the ' ...

'' in 2005.Ministerial decree no. 2005-698 of June 22, 2005
/ref> Its collections include finds from

Paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...

Merovingian The Merovingian dynasty () was the ruling family of the Franks from the middle of the 5th century until 751. They first appear as "Kings of the Franks" in the Roman army of northern Gaul. By 509 they had united all the Franks and northern Gauli ...

times.

Gallery

File:Tulipes du château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye.jpg, The palace as seen from the gardens File:Chateau.vieux.st.germain3.JPG, Angle view of the palace File:Saint-Germain-en-Laye Château Vieux 2011 024.jpg, Details of the palace's façade File:Saint-Germain-en-Laye Château Vieux 2011 079.jpg, The entrance of the palace File:Saint-Germain-en-Laye Château Vieux 2011 081.jpg, The entrance of the museum File:Château Vieux de Saint-Germain-en-Laye cour 1.JPG, The inner courtyard File:Château Vieux de Saint-Germain-en-Laye escalier 1.JPG, One of the staircases File:Château Vieux de Saint-Germain-en-Laye escalier 6.JPG, The inner ceilings

Notes

External links

*
French version
of page also includes the history of the Château)
The Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, National Museum of Archaeology
- The official website of France

{{coord, 48, 53, 53, N, 2, 05, 47, E, display=title, region:FR-J_type:landmark_source:dewiki Houses completed in 1539

Saint-Germain-En-Laye Saint-Germain-en-Laye () is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, from the centre of Paris. Inhabitants are called ''Saint-Germanois'' or ''Saint-Ge ...

Ancien Régime French architecture Châteaux with Renaissance gardens in France Châteaux with formal gardens in France Renaissance architecture in France Museums in Yvelines 1539 establishments in France Réunion des Musées Nationaux Tourist attractions in Yvelines