Maison ancienne
MonumentHidden Treasure
Maison ancienne, located in Vitré (Département 35), is a Renaissance château built in the 16th century. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Period
- Renaissance (16th century)
- Location
- Vitré, Département 35, Bretagne
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 48.1240, -1.2116
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00090963
Nestling in the heart of Vitré, this listed old house embodies the soul of the medieval Breton town, with its chiselled half-timbering and haughty silhouette that has defied the centuries since the days of the great cloth merchants.
History
Vitré is one of Brittany's best-preserved medieval towns, and its cobbled streets are home to architectural treasures that bear witness to a remarkable bourgeois prosperity. This old house, listed as a Historic Monument since 1943, is one of the most authentic expressions of this: a civil building whose walls and structures tell the story of several centuries of urban and social history. What sets this residence apart from the ordinary built landscape is precisely the fact that it belongs to a building tradition specific to the Breton merchant towns of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The timber-framed houses of Vitré, of which this house is an integral part, form a coherent urban ensemble, where each corbelled façade, each sculpted eaves and each mullioned window is part of an urban composition of rare aesthetic coherence. Ministerial protection in 1943 enshrined this heritage value at a time when France was beginning to realise the fragility of its historic urban fabric. To visit this house is to take a mental tour of the floors where merchants, notaries and craftsmen lived and grew rich from the flourishing trade in Breton cloth, for which Vitré was famous until the 18th century. The town was one of the most active commercial centres in the duchy, and its residences still bear eloquent witness to this. The facades facing the street retain the verticality characteristic of medieval urban architecture, where the floor space was precious and each storey projecting from the street gained a few precious centimetres of space. The surrounding setting enhances the experience: Vitré, dominated by its imposing castle with its polygonal turrets, offers a virtually unspoilt setting in which this old house blends in naturally. The narrow streets nearby, such as rue Baudrairie and place du Marchix, offer a coherent route through Breton medieval civil architecture, some of the densest and best preserved in France.
Architecture
This old house is in the tradition of corbelled timber-framed houses, the dominant construction type in Breton and Norman towns in the late Middle Ages. The load-bearing structure is made up of an oak frame, assembled using mortise and tenon joints, with the gaps filled by a layer of cob or brick. This technique, perfectly suited to the Breton climate, provided good insulation while allowing great freedom in the layout of the openings. The facades are typical of medieval civil architecture in the Vitréenne area: the upper storeys are progressively corbelled onto the street, increasing the living space at each level, the wall lights are decorated with geometric or plant motifs, and the windows have stone or wooden mullions framing diamond-shaped panes. The roof, which was steeply pitched in accordance with Breton custom to evacuate heavy rainfall, was covered in natural slate, a material extracted from the slate quarries in the neighbouring Anjou region and widely used in Ille-et-Vilaine. The interior layout followed the logic of medieval trading houses: the ground floor was given over to commercial or craft activities, the first floor was reserved for the hall and reception rooms, and the upper floors were given over to bedrooms and storerooms. This functional stacking, which can be seen from the street in the hierarchy of openings, makes this house a first-rate architectural document of the daily life of the bourgeois of Vitré in the late Middle Ages.
Related Figures
Seigneurs de Laval-Montmorency, protecteurs de Vitré et initiateurs de son développement urbain médiévalMarchands de toile vitréens des XVe-XVIIe siècles, probables commanditaires ou propriétaires de la demeureMarie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné, dont la correspondance éclaire la vie bourgeoise vitréenne du XVIIe siècleInspecteurs des Monuments Historiques des années 1940, artisans de la protection de l'architecture civile médiévale bretonne
Tags
Nearby castles
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Maison ancienne located?
Maison ancienne is located in Vitré, Département 35 department, Bretagne region, France.
When was Maison ancienne built?
Maison ancienne dates back to a period built during the Renaissance (16th century).
Is Maison ancienne open to visitors?
Maison ancienne is currently closed to visitors.
