Villa Marie-Antoinette

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 site of the villa Marie-Antoinette was occupied from the Gallic period (discovery of a Bituriges stater) and under Roman occupation (discovery during excavations on rue d'Assas of potsherds, pitchers, sigillata, bronzes and rings). The road from Clermont (present-day avenue de Royat) was opened in 1879. The foundations of the house were laid around 1885 (discovery of a Bituriges gold stater). Situation of the villa: at the corner of avenue de Royat and rue d'Assas, between Clermont and Chamalières. The district was divided into bourgeois houses surrounded by gardens. These constructions, carried out between 1880 and the Great War, are today being replaced one by one by apartment buildings that increase the density of housing in this sector. The villa is constructed between a courtyard, which separates it at the rear from a service building (garages), and a garden facing the avenue, enclosed by a grille. The lateral façade overlooks a secondary road, rue d'Assas. The villa possesses an original interlocking plan, as it combines projecting sections and ground-level recesses, and the illusion of wings in return through the elevations of the rooflines. A main body in L-shape, to which is attached at the rear a lower, more elongated wing forming a projecting section on the lateral façade facing the garden, constitute the structure of the building. This substantial bourgeois villa displays an eclecticism in which are mingled the measured asymmetry, dear to 19th century architects, a marked neo-Louis XIII silhouette emphasized by the proportion of volumes and the rhythm of openings, and neo-Renaissance décor (supports of the balconies, entablatures and pediments, steps, dormers, etc.). Among the original features of design and décor, one notices on the lateral façade facing the street a heavily charged central bay consisting of a balcony onto which open twin openings topped by a second balcony with a simple opening under a round arch forming a pediment surmounted by a crowning aedicule. On the façade facing the garden, one notes: - a projecting window (bow-window) covered with an elaborate zinc dome (scales, ridge topped with vases); - a very rich principal bay at three superimposed levels (pilasters, columns, and dormer-aedicule with finely sculpted pediment); - a stone cornice-balustrade running at the height of the dormer storey; - a zinc balustrade at mid-height of the raking of the roofs delimiting a level of oculi. This neo-Renaissance villa constructed around 1885 is one of the most original and most carefully executed constructions that we have in Auvergne for this period. The quality and refinement of its architecture and decoration, which exceed those of the Vichy villas, would suggest that its author may be a Parisian architect. Situated on the only avenue of the agglomeration where this type of architecture flourished, it deserves to be preserved as a testimony.