Maison à colombages
MonumentHidden Treasure
At the heart of the Vieux Sarlat, this half-timbered house from the 15th century embodies Périgord medieval architecture in all its splendour: sculpted wooden frames and bold corbelling set against ochre stone.
History
Nestling in the maze of cobbled streets of Sarlat-la-Canéda, one of the best-preserved medieval towns in France, this 15th-century half-timbered house is a striking example of the art of building in Périgord at the end of the Middle Ages. While most of the houses in the Sarlat region are built of blond limestone, this house plays on the complementary nature of wood and stone, creating a rare silhouette that is instantly recognisable in the urban landscape. What makes this building particularly precious is the quality of its exposed framework: the solid oak beams, arranged in the form of a Saint Andrew's cross and crossed chevrons, form a decorative grid that has lost none of its legibility after six centuries. The infill - rammed earth or baked brick depending on the bay - bears witness to the mixed techniques typical of the Périgord Noir, a region of transition between the wood of the Limousin forest and the golden stone of the Causses. Visiting the building from the outside is in itself a journey back in time: from the street, visitors can see the vertical layout of the residence, with the ground floor once used for shops and craftsmen's workshops, the slightly corbelled residential floors - a method of gaining access to the street without encroaching on the ground - and the stone mullioned windows framed in the wood structure. The evening light, grazing the wood and stone reliefs, is the ideal time to appreciate all their plasticity. Listed as a Historic Monument since 1963, the house benefits from a protective framework that guarantees the integrity of its original volumes and materials. It forms part of the vast heritage complex of Sarlat, whose conservation area - one of the first created in France following the Malraux law of 1962 - attracts millions of visitors from all over the world every year. In this exceptional context, the half-timbered house represents an essential fragment of the typological diversity of Périgord medieval housing.
Architecture
The half-timbered house in Sarlat faithfully illustrates the timber-frame construction system used in Périgord at the end of the Middle Ages. The load-bearing structure is made up of a skeleton of squared oak beams - high and low runners, corner posts, intermediate uprights, sloping eaves - whose mortise and tenon joints and wooden pegs are still visible from the street. The infill between the timbers, made of cob (a mixture of clay, straw and horsehair) or mud bricks, is rendered in lime and contributes to the warm colour palette of the façade. The elevation comprises a ground floor with wider openings, betraying an original commercial or craft function - probably a shop or workshop opening onto the street - and one or two progressively corbelled residential storeys. This overhang, of the order of a few dozen centimetres per storey, is created by the projecting floor joists and gives the façade its slightly sloping profile towards the top, so characteristic of medieval timber-framed architecture. The windows are rectangular with wooden or local limestone transoms, some of which still have their interior shutter grooves. The roof, which is steeply pitched in accordance with Périgord custom, is covered with limestone lauzes or canal tiles, depending on the successive alterations. This heavy roofing explains the strength required of the framework and the limestone masonry gable walls that stabilise the wooded structure laterally. Together, they form a coherent and rare example of the mixed techniques - wood and stone - that characterised middle-class housing in the Périgord Noir during the late Gothic period.
Related Figures
Prosper Mérimée — inspecteur général des Monuments Historiques, défenseur du patrimoine médiéval périgourdin au XIXe siècleAndré Malraux — ministre de la Culture, promoteur de la loi sur les secteurs sauvegardés (1962) qui protège l'ensemble de SarlatMaître-charpentier anonyme du XVe siècle — artisan auteur de la structure en pan de boisMarchands et artisans sarladais du XVe siècle — commanditaires de la reconstruction urbaine après la guerre de Cent AnsÉtienne de La Boétie — humaniste sarladais (1530-1563), figure emblématique du Vieux Sarlat, dont la maison natale jouxte le même tissu urbain
