Maisons
Monument
Maisons, located in Lille (Nord), 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
- Lille, Nord, Hauts-de-France
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00107697
These 17th-century façades, which have survived from the Rue de Paris, are jewels of the Flemish Baroque style in Lille, and bear striking witness to the art of building in the capital of French Flanders.
History
In the heart of old Lille, on the Place Louise-de-Bettignies, two 17th-century facades stand like proud survivors of an urban fabric in perpetual transformation. Listed as Historic Monuments since 1927, the facades of houses numbers 168 and 170-170bis, originally located on rue de Paris, have had a singular destiny: moved and reinstalled on this emblematic square in the old quarter, they embody Lille's fierce determination to preserve its architectural soul in the face of the imperatives of modernisation. What makes these houses truly unique is their dual nature: both authentic witnesses to the Flemish Baroque style that characterises the skyline of Old Lille, and rare examples of successful heritage translocation in Northern France. Their façades display the stylistic codes favoured by Lille's masons and stonemasons of the Grand Siècle: blood-red brick alongside white Lézennes stone, window alignments punctuated by pilasters, stepped or scrolled gable caps that contrast with the grey northern sky. Visiting these façades is like immersing yourself in the atmosphere of Spanish and then French Lille, where cloth merchants and middle-class people enriched by the textile trade vied with each other in the elegance of the ornamentation of their homes. The Place Louise-de-Bettignies, with its cobblestones and old buildings, forms a coherent setting where these façades find a second life worthy of their rank. The attentive stroller will be able to look up and read in the stone and brick the story of a town that was successively Burgundian, Spanish and French, and that carried the same aesthetic demands in each of these identities. These houses are less monuments to be visited than a conversation to be had with four centuries of Lille's urban history.
Architecture
The facades of the houses on Place Louise-de-Bettignies (formerly Rue de Paris 168 and 170-170bis) belong to the Flemish Baroque movement, the dominant style in Lille in the 17th century, which differs from Italian and German Baroque in its restrained ornamental style and masterful use of polychrome materials. The characteristic combination of red brick and white ashlar - known as "pierre de Lézennes", extracted from local quarries - gives the elevations an immediately recognisable chromatic rhythm, the visual signature of old Lille. The façades feature a rigorous vertical composition: bays of mullioned or transomed windows, finely-moulded stone surrounds, pilasters or lanterns punctuating the wall surface at regular intervals. The upper levels end with characteristic crowns - scrolled gables, curved or broken pediments - a direct legacy of the Mannerist architecture of Flanders disseminated by the engravings of Hans Vredeman de Vries and his followers. The modenatures, though sober, reveal to the attentive observer the quality of the carving and the mastery of the stonemasons who worked in the region during the Grand Siècle. The relocation of the façades in the 1980s necessitated consolidation and restoration work, which has enabled most of the original elevations to be preserved, while adapting them to their new urban setting on Place Louise-de-Bettignies.
Related Figures
Louis XIV — dont la conquête de Lille en 1667 ouvre une nouvelle ère architecturale dans la villeLouise de Bettignies — héroïne de la Résistance lilloise (1880-1918), dont la place accueillant les façades porte le nomHans Vredeman de Vries — architecte et théoricien flamand (1527-1607) dont les gravures influencèrent profondément le style des façades lilloises du XVIIe siècleLes bourgeois négociants lillois — commanditaires anonymes des maisons de la rue de Paris, enrichis par le commerce de la draperie et du textile
Map
Coordinates not available for this monument.
Tags
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Maisons located?
Maisons is located in Lille, Nord department, Hauts-de-France region, France.
When was Maisons built?
Maisons dates back to a period built during the Renaissance (16th century).
Is Maisons open to visitors?
Maisons is currently closed to visitors.