Hôtel de Réauville ou de la Tour d'Aigues ou de Caumont, located in Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône), is a Renaissance château built in the 16th century. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Au cœur du vieil Aix, l'hôtel de Réauville conjugue l'élégance sobre du classicisme provençal du XVIIIe siècle à une façade ordonnancée d'une rare finesse, témoin discret des grandes dynasties parlementaires aixoises.
Hidden away in the maze of cobbled streets of old Aix-en-Provence, the Hôtel de Réauville - also known as the Hôtel de la Tour d'Aigues or the Hôtel de Caumont - is one of a constellation of private mansions that have made the Provencal capital one of France's best-known cities for 18th-century civil architecture. Classified as a Historic Monument by decree on 16 February 1990, this building discreetly and elegantly embodies the refined taste of the noblesse de robe and the upper middle classes of the parliamentary class, who shaped the urban face of Aix during the Age of Enlightenment. What makes this private mansion truly singular is the superimposition of aristocratic references contained in its three successive names: each of these names refers to a distinct family or seigneury, thus revealing a history of transmissions, matrimonial alliances and crossed fortunes typical of Provençal society under the Ancien Régime. The building contains a social and architectural memory that few other buildings in the town can claim with such intensity. For the attentive visitor, the street façade is already a veritable cabinet of architectural curiosities: the distribution of openings, the careful workmanship of the limestone ashlar surrounds and the sober ornamentation typical of the Provencal school provide an exemplary example of the balance between classical rigour and southern sensibility. The hotel is in constant dialogue with the large neighbouring residences, forming a coherent and precious urban ensemble. Aix-en-Provence, with its two hundred or so seventeenth- and eighteenth-century mansions, is an exceptional place in which to understand how the French provinces were able to assimilate and reinterpret Parisian architectural canons in the light of a specific climate, local materials and building tradition. The Hôtel de Réauville is fully in keeping with this dynamic, offering lovers of architecture and urban history an experience of reading the past that is both accessible and deeply stimulating.
The Hôtel de Réauville is in the tradition of the eighteenth-century Provencal town house, an architectural type that represents one of the most accomplished expressions of French southern classicism. Like the vast majority of its Aix counterparts, it probably has a classic tripartite layout: a main building set between courtyard and garden, articulated by a careful vertical layout in which the noble floors stand out for their height and the care taken with the windows. The main facade, sober and orderly, had to deal with the narrowness of the streets of old Aix, imposing an elegant frontage rather than a set-back composition. The materials used are typical of the building tradition in Aix: the local limestone, extracted from the surrounding quarries, gives the building its distinctive golden hue in the light of the Midi, while the floaty renderings on the secondary sections lend a chromatic unity to the whole. The window surrounds, modillioned cornices, forged balconies and sculpted mascarons are typical of this carefully balanced decorative vocabulary, which borrows from both French tradition and Italian Baroque reminiscences filtered through Provençal sensibility. Inside, the hotel was to display the luxurious features typical of this type of building: a monumental staircase with a wrought-iron banister, parade flats arranged in enfilade, painted wood panelling, fireplaces in Carrara marble or Rognes stone, and French or French-style ceilings adorned with stucco. These interiors, characteristic of the Rococo and neoclassical tastes of the first and second halves of the 18th century, make each of Aix's private mansions a veritable museum of the decorative arts of the Ancien Régime.
Hôtel de Réauville ou de la Tour d'Aigues ou de Caumont is located in Aix-en-Provence, Bouches-du-Rhône department, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, France.
Hôtel de Réauville ou de la Tour d'Aigues ou de Caumont dates back to a period built during the Renaissance (16th century).
Hôtel de Réauville ou de la Tour d'Aigues ou de Caumont is currently closed to visitors.
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Aix-en-Provence
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
