The Château d'Ancenis is a

castle A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified r ...

in the town and '' commune'' of

Ancenis Ancenis (; ) is a former Communes of France, commune in the Loire-Atlantique Departments of France, department in western France. On 1 January 2019, it was merged into the new commune Ancenis-Saint-Géréon. It is a former Subprefectures in France ...

in the

Loire-Atlantique Loire-Atlantique (; br, Liger-Atlantel; before 1957: ''Loire-Inférieure'', br, Liger-Izelañ, link=no) is a department in Pays de la Loire on the west coast of France, named after the river Loire and the Atlantic Ocean. It had a population o ...

'' département'' of France. The castle is on the bank of the Loire.

History

The original castle was built in 990 by Aremburga of Ancenis, widow of

Guerech, Duke of Brittany Guerech of Brittany, was Count of Nantes and Duke of Brittany from 981 to 988. Life Guerech was the second illegitimate son of Alan II and Judith. He succeeded his brother Hoël I upon his death. Guerech had been brought up at the Abbey of ...

, as a motte-and-bailey castle. (A plaque on the castle names Guerech as the constructor, in 984. This is not supported in any documentary sources.) It had simple defences including a

moat A moat is a deep, broad ditch, either dry or filled with water, that is dug and surrounds a castle, fortification, building or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. In some places moats evolved into more extensive ...

and a palisade with an enclosure to shelter the population. Owing to its location, it rapidly developed as an ideal place for surveillance of the river, exercising military and economic control. In 1411, the lord and lady of Ancenis were ordered by the authorities to cease detaining boats that passed the castle and extracting punitive tolls on their cargoes. Its strategic position meant that it was subjected to several sieges between the 12th and 16th centuries, by the English kings Henry II and John, the French kings

Louis IX Louis IX (25 April 1214 – 25 August 1270), commonly known as Saint Louis or Louis the Saint, was King of France from 1226 to 1270, and the most illustrious of the Direct Capetians. He was crowned in Reims at the age of 12, following the d ...

, Louis XI and

François II Francis II (french: François II; 19 January 1544 – 5 December 1560) was King of France from 1559 to 1560. He was also King consort of Scotland as a result of his marriage to Mary, Queen of Scots, from 1558 until his death in 1560. He ...

, Charles, Duke of Brittany and, on the orders of King Charles VIII,

Louis de la Trémoille Louis may refer to: * Louis (coin) * Louis (given name), origin and several individuals with this name * Louis (surname) * Louis (singer), Serbian singer * HMS ''Louis'', two ships of the Royal Navy See also Derived or associated terms * Lewis (d ...

."Le château, classé Monument Historique"
Mairie d'Ancenis website . Retrieved 1 January 2019. Charles VIII ordered the demolition of the castle. In 1488, he wrote to de la Trémoille and his lieutenants forbidding them to allow their workers any holiday until the demolition was complete. Excavations in the 1950s discovered cannon balls as evidence of the sieges of the castle.P-R Giot and P-L Nior
"La Pirogue Prehistorique d'Ancenis"
''Bulletin archéologique du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques'', p 285 Paris 1954 . Retrieved 1 January 2019. From the 17th century, the military role of the castle dwindled. It was dismantled by order of

Richelieu Richelieu (, ; ) may refer to: People * Cardinal Richelieu (Armand-Jean du Plessis, 1585–1642), Louis XIII's chief minister * Alphonse-Louis du Plessis de Richelieu (1582–1653), French Carthusian bishop and Cardinal * Louis François Armand ...

in 1626. Sections of curtain walls and towers were disfigured or removed. The moats were filled with the construction of wharves in 1840 and the establishment of an Ursuline boarding school in 1850, continued the damage.

Description

The gatehouse, built at the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 16th century, has a unique defensive device: a

drawbridge A drawbridge or draw-bridge is a type of moveable bridge typically at the entrance to a castle or tower surrounded by a moat. In some forms of English, including American English, the word ''drawbridge'' commonly refers to all types of moveable ...

arranged in a

chicane A chicane () is a serpentine curve in a road, added by design rather than dictated by geography. Chicanes add extra turns and are used both in motor racing and on roads and streets to slow traffic for safety. For example, one form of chicane is ...

and a crooked arched gallery with a

portcullis A portcullis (from Old French ''porte coleice'', "sliding gate") is a heavy vertically-closing gate typically found in medieval fortifications, consisting of a latticed grille made of wood, metal, or a combination of the two, which slides down gr ...

. The Renaissance home, a residential project started by Claude 1 de Rieux and his wife Suzanne de Bourbon, was built around 1529. Its facade, on the courtyard side, has decor of the first Renaissance, while the structure of the house remains

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

Preservation

It has been listed since 1977 as a ''

monument historique ''Monument historique'' () is a designation given to some national heritage sites in France. It may also refer to the state procedure in France by which National Heritage protection is extended to a building, a specific part of a building, a coll ...

'' by the French Ministry of Culture. This protection concerns the entirety of the fortifications, as well as the façades and roof of the buildings (Renaissance house, former chapel and a dwelling called "logis de Marie Fouquet"). It became the property of the town in 1986. In the 1990s, work was undertaken to demolish the 19th century chapel and the 1960s school building and to restore the gatehouse. Between 2013 and 2015, the Renaissance house was repaired, with the structure strengthened and entrances reopened.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ancenis, Chateau d' Castles in Pays de la Loire Châteaux in Loire-Atlantique Monuments historiques of Pays de la Loire