Maison natale de Surcouf, ou hôtel de la Bertaudière, located in Saint-Malo (Département 35), is a Renaissance château built in the 16th century. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Dans le cœur historique de Saint-Malo, la maison natale de Robert Surcouf, le célèbre corsaire malouin, incarne trois siècles d'histoire maritime et d'architecture granite bretonne du XVIIe siècle.
In the heart of Saint-Malo's inner city, between cobbled streets and ramparts battered by the Channel winds, stands the Hôtel de la Bertaudière, better known as Robert Surcouf's birthplace. This handsome seventeenth-century building belongs to the great tradition of Saint-Malo's bourgeois and merchant mansions, built for prosperous families whose fortunes were made on the distant seas - trading in India, racing and shipping. What sets this house apart from so many other historic French residences is its dual status: as a remarkably well-preserved monument of Breton civil architecture, and as the setting for a living memory, that of the most famous privateer of the Napoleonic era. Surcouf may only have been born here one night in 1773, but the granite stone still bears the imprint of this line of daring sailors who made Saint-Malo the capital of ocean racing. The visit begins as soon as you enter the street: the sober, powerful façade, typically Malouine, commands respect. The solidity of the local granite, the mullioned windows and the Anjou slate roof give the building an elegant severity that the people of Saint-Malo call "character". There are no superfluous ornaments, just an architectural dignity that tells of the affluence of its first occupants. The surrounding area adds to the historical immersion: just a few steps away, the 15th-century ramparts, rebuilt after the bombings of 1944, encircle a town that has been reborn true to itself. The Maison de la Bertaudière fits naturally into this homogeneous urban landscape, where granite and slate have dictated the law for centuries, and where each façade seems to tell the story of a maritime adventure.
The Hôtel de la Bertaudière is a perfect example of 17th-century Malouin domestic architecture, characterised by the exclusive use of bluish-grey granite quarried locally and from the surrounding islands. The sober, rhythmic façade features several bays of windows framed in finely dressed ashlar, in a vertical composition that gives the building a discreet, confident presence. The straight or lightly dressed lintels, projecting sills and alternating stone quoins bear witness to the care taken in the construction, despite the rigour of the regional style. The roof, covered in Anjou slate - the material of choice for the middle-class homes of Saint Malo - has a steep slope adapted to the winds and rain of the Brittany coast. Pedimented dormers, if they existed at all, were used to provide light for the attic space, an invaluable feature in these town houses, whose tight layout was dictated by the layout of the inner city. Inside, the layout typical of this type of residence is organised around a central corridor and a stone or wooden staircase with turned banisters leading to the different levels. The reception rooms on the ground and first floors would have had carved granite fireplaces, an element of comfort and prestige characteristic of hotels in Saint Malo at the time. The overall effect is one of austere elegance, far removed from the ornate splendour of the Loire châteaux, but perfectly in keeping with the powerful, determined character of the seafaring men who lived there.
Maison natale de Surcouf, ou hôtel de la Bertaudière is located in Saint-Malo, Département 35 department, Bretagne region, France.
Maison natale de Surcouf, ou hôtel de la Bertaudière dates back to a period built during the Renaissance (16th century).
Maison natale de Surcouf, ou hôtel de la Bertaudière is currently closed to visitors.
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Saint-Malo
Bretagne