Aisne
Aisne ( , ; ; ) is a French departments of France, department in the Hauts-de-France region of northern France. It is named after the river Aisne (river), Aisne. In 2020, it had a population of 529,374.
Geography
The department borders No ...
in
Hauts-de-France
Hauts-de-France (; ; ), also referred to in English as Upper France, is the northernmost region of France, created by the territorial reform of French regions in 2014, from a merger of Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardy. Its prefecture is Lille. ...
in northern
France
France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
.
Population
Sights
The Château de Blérancourt, an influential design by
Salomon de Brosse
Salomon de Brosse (c. 1571 – 8 December 1626) was an early 17th-century French architect who moved away from late Mannerism to reassert the French Baroque architecture, French classical style and was a major influence on François Mansart.
...
houses the National Museum of French-American Friendship and Cooperation, (''Musée franco-américain''), founded by Anne Morgan, daughter of the financier J. Pierpont Morgan (due to reopen in 2007). The collections of the Museum include many works on the theme of WW1, among them several paintings of
Joseph-Félix Bouchor
Joseph-Félix Bouchor (15 September 1853 – 27 October 1937) was a French painter noted for his portraits and his Orientalist themes.
Biography
The artist was born in Paris. He studied at the Beaux-Arts. Joseph-Felix Bouchor exhibited his ...
.Franco-American Museum in Blérancourt, France
The ''
corps de logis
In architecture, a ''corps de logis'' () is the principal or main block, or central building of a mansion, country or manor house, castle, or palace. It contains the rooms of principal business, the state apartments and the ceremonial or formal ...
'' of the château no longer exists, but de Brosse's twin cubical stone
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 ...
s and a grand entrance gateway approached by a stone bridge across a
moat
A moat is a deep, broad ditch dug around a castle, fortification, building, or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. Moats can be dry or filled with water. In some places, moats evolved into more extensive water d ...
(now dry) survive. The pavilions have identical façades on all sides, framed in rusticated quoins at the corners: each consists of a pair of pedimented windows that make a composition with a central ''œil de bœuf'' window under a semicyclical arch that carries the dentilled cornice across and breaks into the roof balustrading above. Slate roofs with cyma curves converge to a central four-sided cap. The central gateway takes the form of a
triumphal arch
A triumphal arch is a free-standing monumental structure in the shape of an archway with one or more arched passageways, often designed to span a road, and usually standing alone, unconnected to other buildings. In its simplest form, a triumphal ...
arboretum
An arboretum (: arboreta) is a botanical collection composed exclusively of trees and shrubs of a variety of species. Originally mostly created as a section in a larger garden or park for specimens of mostly non-local species, many modern arbor ...
and garden plants from the
New World
The term "New World" is used to describe the majority of lands of Earth's Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas, and sometimes Oceania."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: ...
.
The house of
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just (; 25 August 176710 Thermidor, Year II 8 July 1794, sometimes nicknamed the Archangel of Terror, was a French revolutionary, political philosopher, member and president of the National Convention, French ...
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just (; 25 August 176710 Thermidor, Year II 8 July 1794, sometimes nicknamed the Archangel of Terror, was a French revolutionary, political philosopher, member and president of the National Convention, French ...