Fortifications de la ville : Bastion 17 dit Le Papegaut
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Fortifications de la ville : Bastion 17 dit Le Papegaut, located in Port-Louis (Département 56), is a Renaissance château built in the 16th century. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- Fort
- Period
- Renaissance (16th century)
- Location
- Port-Louis, Département 56, Bretagne
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 47.7045, -3.3507
- Mérimée Reference
- PA56000022
A forgotten sentinel in Lorient harbour, the Bastion du Papegaut has watched over the bay of Loc Malo since the 17th century. Its name evokes a mysterious royal shooting privilege granted to the Blavet bourgeois militia.
History
Tucked away on a grassy slope to the south-east of the Port-Louis fortifications, Bastion 17, known as "Le Papegaut", is one of the most unusual pieces of the defensive jigsaw puzzle protecting the entrance to the Blavet and Lorient roadstead. Half-buried under the vegetation, surrounded by lowered and modified 17th-century walls, it offers the attentive walker a layered reading of three centuries of French military history, from Vauban's engineers to the entrenchments of the Second Empire. What sets this bastion apart from its neighbours is first and foremost its name: the Papegaut. This term refers to a harquebus firing exercise - or more precisely, the royal privilege that authorised it - practised by the bourgeois militia of Blavet under Henry III. This symbolic concession, granted to civilians in arms to practise combat, gives the bastion a martial and popular dimension that the other structures in the stronghold do not have. The site thus embodies the idea of a shared defence, between royal engineers and citizen soldiers. From its lowered ramparts, the view stretches across the bay of Loc Malo and the Gâvres peninsula, a panorama of estuary and Atlantic moorland that eighteenth-century artillerymen knew by heart. The bastion's geographical position, at the south-eastern end of the urban enclosure, made it a natural observatory capable of warning of any enemy approach from the open sea well before it reached the port. The visitor experience is that of an open-air archaeology: the successive layers of military intervention - seventeenth-century masonry, eighteenth-century fittings, nineteenth-century casemates - can be read in the landscape like the strata of a geological cake. Visitors interested in military heritage will find much to ponder here, while ordinary walkers will be seduced by the tranquillity of the site and the rugged beauty of the surrounding Breton coastline. Classified as a Historic Monument in 2023, the Bastion du Papegaut now enjoys official protection, confirming its importance as part of the fortified complex of Port-Louis, one of the best preserved on the French Atlantic coast.
Architecture
Today, the Bastion du Papegaut has an atypical profile in the panorama of French bastioned fortifications: half-buried beneath a grassy embankment, it is only fully revealed to those who take the time to walk around it. The seventeenth-century walls that encircle it, built of carefully matched Breton granite rubble, bear witness to the care taken in the original construction of the enclosure between 1649 and 1653. These facings, characteristic of the Breton building tradition of the classical period, alternate with sections lowered in the 19th century, creating an irregular ridge line that visually recounts the successive interventions. The general shape of the bastion follows the canonical 17th-century bastioned plan: two oblique faces meeting in a salient to allow flanking fire and eliminate blind spots. Situated at the south-eastern end of the urban enclosure, the Papegaut was designed to project its fire towards the bay of Loc Malo while providing a link with neighbouring works. The Saint-François tower, mentioned in the sources as a point of reference during the lowering of the walls in 1878, was probably an additional flanking element. The improvements carried out in 1878 by Henri Coville profoundly altered the architectural interpretation of the complex: earthen entrenchments, masonry casemates and massive earthworks superimposed on the traditional masonry a defence-in-depth system characteristic of the military theories of the Third Republic. These successive layers make Papegaut an exceptional architectural document, superimposing the evolution of French fortification thinking over more than two centuries.
Related Figures
Henri III — roi de France ayant accordé aux milices bourgeoises de Blavet le privilège du papegaut, droit de tir à l'arquebuse qui donna son nom au bastionFrançois de Laval-Montmorency — officier commandant la batterie installée sur le bastion en 1706Louis Lazare d'Ajot — ingénieur militaire ayant évalué les fortifications de Port-Louis à la fin du XVIIIe siècle et jugé le site trop réduitHenri Coville — ingénieur militaire ayant conduit les grands travaux de transformation du bastion en 1878, incluant casemates et retranchements de terreSébastien Le Prestre de Vauban — maréchal et ingénieur général des fortifications dont les principes ont influencé la conception de l'enceinte de Port-Louis au XVIIe siècle
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Fortifications de la ville : Bastion 17 dit Le Papegaut located?
Fortifications de la ville : Bastion 17 dit Le Papegaut is located in Port-Louis, Département 56 department, Bretagne region, France.
When was Fortifications de la ville : Bastion 17 dit Le Papegaut built?
Fortifications de la ville : Bastion 17 dit Le Papegaut dates back to a period built during the Renaissance (16th century).
Is Fortifications de la ville : Bastion 17 dit Le Papegaut open to visitors?
Fortifications de la ville : Bastion 17 dit Le Papegaut is currently closed to visitors.