Hôtel dit des Rois ou d'Henri III

English translation

The text above is the record as published by the Ministère de la Culture, in French. The English below is a machine translation made by TreeAlive, not by the Ministère de la Culture; it has not been checked by a person. Where the two differ, the original is the record. Report a translation error: privacy@treealive.com

History

The small town of Châtillon-sur-Indre, situated in the north-west of the department of Indre, was the seat of an important seigneury which came under royal control in 1203. Seat of the particular Bailly of Touraine, which became a présidial in 1639, it was in the modern period the most important judicial town of Bas-Berry, maintaining authority over a territory covering a large part of Haute-Touraine and half of Bas-Berry. The presence of royal administrations brought it real prosperity. At the end of the 16th century, hotels, evidence of the town's new wealth, were built. The hotel said to be of Henri III was constructed to the north-west of the town, in the heart of a block, on a vast plot extending between the rue Grande, an essential axis of settlement in the town from its origin, and the mall dominated by urban fortifications. If the documents allowing knowledge of the circumstances of the construction of this hotel are lacking, the mannerist style of its street and north-west façades, as well as the inscription FRANCE POULONGNE accompanied by the monogram of King Henri III, make it possible to place its construction during the king's reign, perhaps around 1584, the date at which the sovereign took possession of the châtellenie of Châtillon. The builder, whose name is not known, must have been a notable in his service. The treatment of the entrance and the careful decoration of its principal façade distinguish this hotel from the other houses on the street and attest to the place of its owner in the social hierarchy. At the end of the 16th century, the hotel must have been composed of two principal bodies of buildings: a main dwelling on the street comprising a perpendicular north-west wing giving onto a small interior courtyard, and a body transverse to the south of the covered passage serving a vast courtyard. The composition of the façade established on the rue Grande manifests a concern for regularity. The superposition of openings and dormers, the horizontal lines of entablements and mouldings, clearly mark the more or less symmetrical arrangement whose axis is constituted by the bay of the former staircase. This façade offers the particularity of reconciling two styles of contemporary decoration, distributed on either side of the staircase bay: on the left, orders associated with rustication enliven it, and on the right, moulded framings with crossettes of the openings confer upon it greater sobriety and a certain austerity. This same vocabulary is taken up on the north-west return façade, without however the picturesque contribution of grotesques. Does this distribution correspond to a particular taste or does it mark a brief interruption in construction and a change of programme? Although the ground floor of this hotel has been mutilated by the piercing of shops, and its courtyard façades have been disfigured, its two façades on the street and north-west are among the most remarkable of Châtillon-sur-Indre. They show in what manner the classical style was understood and interpreted in the provinces in the last quarter of the 16th century. The hotel said to be of Henri III, an important element of the architectural heritage of the town, is also the rare and fragile witness of a prosperous era of its history.