Château du Plessis-Bourré
CastleHidden Gem
The Château du Plessis-Bourré stands within the commune of Écuillé in Maine-et-Loire, some fifteen kilometres north of Angers, poised midway between the valleys of the Mayenne and the Sarthe. It ranks among those Loire châteaux that have been spared the passage of time in terms of their archi
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History
In the heart of Maine-et-Loire, to the north of Angers, the château du Plessis-Bourré asserts itself with rare self-evidence upon the Angevin landscape: set upon its forty-metre-wide moat, it presents the visitor with a spectacle of architectural coherence that borders on the surreal. Unlike so many châteaux remodelled century after century, the Plessis-Bourré rose from the ground in a mere five years, between 1468 and 1473, endowing it with an exceptional stylistic unity. Everything here breathes harmony, from the whiteness of the Angevin tuffeau to the measured symmetry of its corner towers. What renders the Plessis-Bourré truly singular is the fascinating tension between fortress and pleasure residence. Machicolations run the length of the curtain walls, the towers are crowned with pepper-pot roofs, and yet the whole already evokes the princely palace far more than the castle of war. Jean Bourré, its patron, was a man of court and of power — Treasurer of France and confidant of Louis XI — and he sought a residence befitting his station, at once impregnable and magnificent. Within, the great guardroom holds a surprise that few French monuments can rival: its painted coffered ceiling, composed of some one hundred panels depicting allegorical, esoteric and moral scenes, stands as an exceptional testament to the symbolic thought of the late Middle Ages. Scholars continue to this day to discern within it allusions to alchemy, to politics and to human vice, several of which remain tantalizingly enigmatic. A visit unfolds in an atmosphere of absolute serenity. One crosses the still-functioning drawbridge, strolls along the moats in which the towers cast their reflections, and explores the apartments appointed with quiet refinement. The château remains inhabited, lending it the atmosphere of a living home rather than a frozen museum. The formal French gardens, redesigned in the nineteenth century, frame the building with an understated and enduring elegance.
Architecture
Le Plessis-Bourré follows the classic quadrangular plan of the late medieval fortified château, with four cylindrical corner towers crowned by conical slate roofs and a regular curtain wall punctuated by sparse defensive openings. The entire structure is built in white tuffeau, the calcareous stone so characteristic of the Val de Loire, which lends the building its luminous hue and its almost immaculate appearance. A principal residential range occupies the north wing, flanked by a massive square keep housing the state apartments. Access is gained through an entrance châtelet on the south face, approached by a drawbridge with its original operating mechanism still intact — a rare and precious survival. The most striking architectural feature is the continuous belt of machicolations that runs, uninterrupted, around the full perimeter of the château: largely decorative in purpose, they speak to Jean Bourré's determination to project the codes of seigneurial power whilst constructing, in truth, a residence of considerable comfort. The cross-mullioned windows, the gabled dormers with their carved ornament and the monumental chimneypieces, meanwhile, signal the first stirrings of Renaissance taste beginning to make itself felt along the Loire towards the close of the fifteenth century. The interior holds a surprise of remarkable consequence: the ground-floor guardroom, whose coffered painted ceiling — comprising nearly one hundred figurative panels — stands without known parallel anywhere in France. Executed in grisaille and polychrome, these panels illustrate moral allegories, popular proverbs of the late Middle Ages and esoteric symbols whose precise meaning scholars continue to dispute. The first-floor apartments retain furnishings of exceptional quality dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century.
Related Figures
Jean Bourré (1424-1506) — trésorier de France, secrétaire de Louis XI, commanditaire et constructeur du châteauLouis XI — roi de France, hôte régulier du château et ami personnel de Jean BourréColin Le Sourd — architecte angevin présumé maître d'œuvre des travaux (1468-1473)Charles VIII — roi de France, continua de fréquenter le château après Louis XICharles de Cossé-Brissac — propriétaire au XVIe siècle, issu de la grande noblesse angevineFamille de Vaugirault — propriétaires au XIXe siècle, responsables des premières campagnes de restauration
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