Maison médiévale
MonumentHidden Treasure
Maison médiévale, located in Montbazon (Indre-et-Loire), is a medieval landmark built in the Middle Ages. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Period
- Medieval (11th-15th century)
- Location
- Montbazon, Indre-et-Loire, Centre-Val de Loire
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 47.2868, 0.7131
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00135297
This late 12th-century medieval house in Montbazon, built of millstone, is a rare and authentic illustration of the way Romanesque urban life was organised in Touraine.
© Wikimedia Commons
History
In the heart of Montbazon, a town in the Touraine region dominated by the silhouette of its Capetian keep, lies one of the most precious examples of medieval civil architecture in the region: a house built at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in the dying days of the Romanesque style. Listed as a Historic Monument since 1995, it belongs to that rare category of domestic buildings that have survived the centuries without being absorbed by successive alterations that have erased their original substance. What makes this house truly singular is the almost intact legibility of its interior layout: a ground floor used for commercial or craft purposes - the medieval bottega, as it were - topped by a single living room forming the core of family life, itself topped by an attic. This bipartite layout, typical of medieval urban houses in the Loire and Berry regions, gives visitors a close-up view of the daily life of a bourgeois or craftsman in the feudal era, in a way that few monuments do. The small-scale millstone construction gives the building a dark, mineral texture, typical of the local materials of inland Touraine. The trapezoidal plan, no doubt the result of the restricted urban layout of the medieval town, gives the building the organic character typical of vernacular architecture of the Middle Ages: built not by architects in the modern sense, but by masons adapting their skills to the constraints of the terrain. To visit this house is to immerse yourself in the intimacy of a medieval town that the great fortresses never show. Where the keep of Montbazon embodies the military might of the Foulques d'Anjou, this house speaks of ordinary people, of those who worked, traded and lived in the shadow of the walls. The heritage emotion it arouses is of a completely different nature: more discreet, closer, more human.
Architecture
The trapezoidal plan of the house is its first formal originality: this irregular shape, far from being a defect, is a direct reflection of the medieval urban plot layout, where the plots of land followed the contours of the existing streets and lanes. The masonry is made of small units of millstone, a local siliceous rock with a dense, dark grain, cut into regular blocks of modest size and carefully laid. This material, which is typical of vernacular construction in Touraine and Berry, gives the walls a remarkable robustness and textured appearance, a far cry from the white tufa that adorns the great houses of the Loire. The vertical layout of the building follows the canonical layout of the Romanesque urban house: on the ground floor, an open or semi-open space for economic activities (commerce, crafts, storage), accessible from the street via a wide bay or a porch. The first floor, accessible by an internal or external staircase, houses the main living area, a multi-purpose space that doubles as a bedroom, family meeting room and storage area. Above, an attic probably completed the volume, serving as an attic or storeroom. In terms of detailed architectural features, we can assume that, in comparison with similar Romanesque houses preserved in Touraine and the Centre-Val de Loire region, there are Romanesque geminated or round-arched windows on the first floor, as well as monolithic stone lintels on the service openings. The meticulous workmanship of the masonry angles, the quoins and the regularity of the small units bear witness to a skilled workforce, familiar with the construction techniques disseminated by the region's monastic and castellan construction sites.
Related Figures
Foulques Nerra, comte d'Anjou (972-1040), constructeur du donjon de Montbazon et figure tutélaire du développement urbain de la villePhilippe II Auguste, roi de France, dont la reconquête de la Touraine (1204) encadre historiquement la construction de la maisonArtisans et maçons anonymes du XIIe siècle, transmetteurs des techniques de petit appareil roman en TouraineFoulques V d'Anjou, comte d'Anjou et roi de Jérusalem, sous le règne de qui le bourg de Montbazon connut un essor notable
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Maison médiévale located?
Maison médiévale is located in Montbazon, Indre-et-Loire department, Centre-Val de Loire region, France.
When was Maison médiévale built?
Maison médiévale dates back to a period built in the Middle Ages (11th-15th century).
Is Maison médiévale open to visitors?
Maison médiévale is currently closed to visitors.