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Château De Sceaux
The Château de Sceaux is a grand country house in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, approximately from the centre of Paris, France. Located in a park laid out by André Le Nôtre, visitors can tour the house, outbuildings and gardens. The Petit Château operates as the Musée de l'Île-de-France, a museum of local history. The commune operates the site as Musée du Domaine départemental de Sceaux. The former château was built for Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's minister of finance, who purchased the ''domaine'' in 1670. The present château, designed to evoke the style of Louis XIII, dates from the Second Empire. Some of Colbert's outbuildings remain, as well as the bones of the garden layout. History The seigneurie of Sceaux appears in 15th century documents, but little remains above ground of the château built for the family Potier de Gesvres in 1597. Colbert turned to some of the premier royal architects and craftsmen to design a seat worthy of his station, the architect broth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avenue (landscape)
In landscaping, an avenue (from the French), alameda (from the Portuguese and Spanish), or allée (from the French), is traditionally a straight path or road with a line of trees or large shrubs running along each side, which is used, as its Latin source ''venire'' ("to come") indicates, to emphasize the "coming to," or ''arrival'' at a landscape or architectural feature. In most cases, the trees planted in an avenue will be all of the same species or cultivar, so as to give uniform appearance along the full length of the avenue. The French term ''allée'' is used for avenues planted in parks and landscape gardens, as well as boulevards such as the ''Grande Allée'' in Quebec City, Canada, and '' Karl-Marx-Allee'' in Berlin. History The avenue is one of the oldest ideas in the history of gardens. An Avenue of Sphinxes still leads to the tomb of the pharaoh Hatshepsut. Avenues similarly defined by guardian stone lions lead to the Ming tombs in China. British archaeologis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saint-Malo
Saint-Malo (, , ; Gallo: ; ) is a historic French port in Ille-et-Vilaine, Brittany, on the English Channel coast. The walled city had a long history of piracy, earning much wealth from local extortion and overseas adventures. In 1944, the Allies heavily bombarded Saint-Malo, which was garrisoned by German troops. The city changed into a popular tourist centre, with a ferry terminal serving the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, as well as the Southern English settlements of Portsmouth, Hampshire and Poole, Dorset. The famous transatlantic single-handed yacht race Route du Rhum, which takes place every four years in November, is between Saint Malo and Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe. Population The population in 2017 was 46,097 – though this can increase to up to 300,000 in the summer tourist season. With the suburbs included, the metropolitan area's population is approximately 133,000 (2017). The population of the commune more than doubled in 1967 with the me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considered fundamental principles of liberal democracy, while phrases like '' liberté, égalité, fraternité'' reappeared in other revolts, such as the 1917 Russian Revolution, and inspired campaigns for the abolition of slavery and universal suffrage. The values and institutions it created dominate French politics to this day. Its causes are generally agreed to be a combination of social, political and economic factors, which the ''Ancien Régime'' proved unable to manage. In May 1789, widespread social distress led to the convocation of the Estates General, which was converted into a National Assembly in June. Continuing unrest culminated in the Storming of the Bastille on 14 July, which led to a series of radical measures by the Assemb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philippe De La Guêpière
(Pierre Louis) Philippe de La Guêpière (c. 1715 – 30 October 1773) was an 18th-century French architect whose main commissions were from Karl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg. Early life Philippe was born in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, south of Paris, the son of Lucien de La Guêpière, clerk of the works at the château de Sceaux, where the architect employed by Louis XIV's natural son, the duc du Maine, had been his uncle, Jacques de La Guêpière (1670–1734). Apparently having followed the architectural courses of the theoretician Jacques-François Blondel, from the 1730s La Guêpière took courses in architecture in Paris. He attended the Académie royale d'architecture. In 1750 he issued his engraved folio volume ''Plans, coupes et élévations de différents palais et églises''. That same year Leopoldo Retti, who was engaged in building the Neues Schloss in Stuttgart for Karl Eugen, made an artistic reconnoitering trip to Paris, in the company of the duke's garden d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pavilion
In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia, there may be pavilions that are either freestanding or connected by covered walkways, as in the Forbidden City ( Chinese pavilions), Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, and in Mughal buildings like the Red Fort. * As part of a large palace, pavilions may be symmetrically placed building ''blocks'' that flank (appear to join) a main building block or the outer ends of wings extending from both sides of a central building block, the '' corps de logis''. Such configurations provide an emphatic visual termination to the composition of a large building, akin to bookends. The word is from French (Old French ) and it meant a small palace, from Latin (accusative of ). In Late Latin and Old French, it meant both ‘butterfly’ and ‘tent’, becaus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his '' nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—especially of the Roman Catholic Church—and of slavery. Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and scientific expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. Voltaire was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties and was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. His polemics witheringly satirized intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Joseph Mouret
Jean-Joseph Mouret (11 April 1682 in Avignon – 22 December 1738 in Charenton-le-Pont) was a French composer whose dramatic works made him one of the leading exponents of Baroque music in his country. Even though most of his works are rarely performed, Mouret's name survives today thanks to the popularity of the Fanfare-Rondeau from his first ''Suite de symphonies'', which has been adopted as the signature tune of the PBS program ''Masterpiece'' and is a popular musical choice in many modern weddings. Life He was the son of Jean Bertrand Mouret, a silk merchant, who gave him a good education and, noting his early gifts for music, favored this choice. He sang with talent, began to compose with success and, around the age of twenty-five, settled in Paris. Talented and endowed with a pleasant character, he was not long in making himself known there and, in 1708, was introduced to Anne, Duchess of Maine, whose salon at Sceaux was a center of courtly society in the declining y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people held by an inspiring host. During the gathering they amuse one another and increase their knowledge through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please or to educate" (Latin: ''aut delectare aut prodesse''). Salons in the tradition of the French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries were carried on until as recently as the 1920s in urban settings. Historical background The salon was an Italian invention of the 16th century, which flourished in France throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. The salon continued to flourish in Italy throughout the 19th century. In 16th-century Italy, some brilliant circles formed in the smaller courts which resembled salons, often galvanized by the presence of a beautiful and educated patroness such as Berta Zuckerkandl, Isabella d'Este or Elisabetta Gonzaga. Salons were an important place for the exchange of id ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
