Maison du 17e siècle
MonumentHidden Treasure
Maison du 17e siècle, located in Landerneau (Département 29), 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
- Landerneau, Département 29, Bretagne
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 48.4492, -4.2489
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00090038
Standing at one of Landerneau's historic crossroads, this 17th-century stone house features an elegant corbelled corner, a rare example of Breton civil architecture from the maritime golden age.
History
In the heart of Landerneau, a port town whose trading prosperity reached its peak in the 16th and 17th centuries, this three-storey stone house is one of the few surviving examples of well-to-do civil architecture in modern Brittany. Listed as a Historic Monument since 1926, it is part of a discreet but precious heritage that has all too often been overshadowed by the grand residences of the nobility. What makes this building truly unique is its corner corbelling: this constructional device, in which the upper floors cantilever out over the street, was both a technical feat and a sign of social status. In the commercial towns of Brittany, corbelling allowed more living space to be added on each level without encroaching further on the public thoroughfare - an elegant solution to the constraints of medieval and post-medieval urban parcelling. In the 17th century, Landerneau, crossed by the River Elorn and boasting a famous inhabited bridge - one of the last in Europe still in use - was a network of dense lanes populated by merchants, shipowners and craftsmen enriched by the trade in linen, cloth and Atlantic produce. This house is fully in keeping with this context of bourgeois and merchant opulence. To visit this building is to look at the Kersanton stone or Finistère granite, worked by skilled local masons, and to imagine the comings and goings of a prosperous household at a time when Landerneau was one of the most active commercial centres in the Léon region. Viewed from the street, the corbelled corner offers a remarkably coherent architectural composition, where the verticality of the storeys meets the horizontality of the stone stringcourses and lintels. The immediate setting, within a partially preserved old urban fabric, reinforces the historic immersion. The house works in harmony with the other old buildings in the town centre, forming a whole that makes Landerneau one of Finistère's most endearing towns full of character.
Architecture
The 17th-century house in Landerneau is a three-storey ashlar building above the ground floor, typical of wealthy urban dwellings in western Brittany in the modern era. The facade, sober and rigorous in its proportions, reflects the Breton taste for an architecture devoid of superfluous ornamentation but attentive to the quality of the workmanship. Local granite, an omnipresent material in Léon and Finistère, forms the main framework of the walls, giving the building the silvery-grey hue so characteristic of the region's old buildings. The most remarkable architectural feature is undoubtedly the corner corbelling: on the upper levels, the walls project beyond the vertical of the ground floor, supported by carved stone corbels. This device, used here on the corner of the plot, creates a striking effect of volume that enhances the silhouette of the street and marks the house out as a landmark in the urban fabric. Breton corbels from this period are distinguished from their Norman or Alsatian equivalents by a formal austerity that sacrifices nothing for structural solidity. Mullioned or cross-hung windows, as were common in 17th-century Breton bourgeois houses, punctuate the façades and provide light to the rooms on each level. The monolithic granite lintels, the discreet modelling of the stringcourses separating the levels and the careful treatment of the corners bear witness to the technical mastery of the Finistère stonemasons of the time, trained in a long tradition of granite working that had nothing to envy of the great Parisian workshops.
Related Figures
Marchands drapiers de Landerneau (XVIIe siècle) — commanditaires probables, enrichis par le commerce de la toile de lin exportée vers l'Ibérie et les AntillesTailleurs de pierre du Léon (XVIIe siècle) — artisans locaux maîtrisant la taille du granite finistérien et les techniques d'encorbellementCommissaires des Monuments Historiques (1926) — responsables de l'inscription protectrice de l'édifice, dans le cadre des campagnes de sauvegarde du patrimoine civil breton
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Maison du 17e siècle located?
Maison du 17e siècle is located in Landerneau, Département 29 department, Bretagne region, France.
When was Maison du 17e siècle built?
Maison du 17e siècle dates back to a period built during the Renaissance (16th century).
Is Maison du 17e siècle open to visitors?
Maison du 17e siècle is currently closed to visitors.