Cour D'honneur

A ''cour d'honneur'' (; ; german: Ehrenhof) is the principal and formal approach and forecourt of a large building. It is usually defined by two secondary wings projecting forward from the main central block (''corps de logis''), sometimes with a fourth side, consisting of a low wing or a railing. The Palace of Versailles (''illustration'') and Blenheim Palace (''plan'') both feature such entrance courts.

Definition

Technically, the term ''cour d'honneur'' can be used of any large building whether public or residential, ancient or modern, which has a symmetrical courtyard laid out in this way.

History

Some 16th-century symmetrical Western European country houses built on U-shaped groundplans resulted in a sheltered central door in a main range that was embraced between projecting wings, but the formalized ''cour d'honneur'' is first found in the great palaces and mansions of 17th-century Europe, where it forms the principal approach and ceremonial entrance to the building. Its open courtyard is presented like the classical permanent theatre set of a proscenium stage, such as the built Roman set of opposed ''palazzi'' in a perspective street at Palladio's Teatro Olimpico (Vicenza, 1584). Like the theatre set, the built environment is defined and enclosed from the more public space by ornate wrought iron gilded railings. A later development replaced the railings with an open architectural columnar screen, as at Palais Royal (Paris), Schönbrunn Palace (Vienna), Alexander Palace (Saint Petersburg), or Henry Holland's Ionic screen formerly at Carlton House, London (''illustrated below'').

Examples of a ''cour d'honneur'' can be found in many of the most notable Baroque and classicizing buildings of Europe including the Palazzo Pitti, one of the first 16th century residences to open a ''cour d'honneur'' in the Pitti's case by embracing three sides of an existing public space. Other 16th century urban ''palazzi'' remained resolutely enclosed, like Palazzo Farnese, Rome. In Rome, the wings of Carlo Maderno's Palazzo Barberini design (1627), were the first that reached forward from a central block to create a ''cour d'honneur'' floorplan.

File:Carltonhs.jpg, Henry Holland's Ionic screen fronts a shallow ''cour d'honneur'' at the Prince Regent's Carlton House in Pall Mall, London
File:Palbarberini.jpg, Palazzo Barberini: without railings the entrance court is still public space

On a condensed, urban scale the formula is expressed in Parisian private houses, '' hôtels particuliers'' built ''entre cour et jardin'' (), between court and garden. In these plans, the street front may be expressed as a range of buildings not unlike the ordinary houses (''maisons'') that flank it, but with a grand, often arched, doorway, through which a carriage could pass into the ''cour d'honneur'' secreted behind. In a cramped site, one of the flanking walls of the ''cour d'honneur'' may be no more than an architectural screen, balancing the wing of the hôtel opposite it, which would often contain domestic offices and a stable.Michel Gallet ''Les Demeures parisiennes: l'époque de Louis XVI'', (Paris: Le Temps) 1964. On a grander scale, the Palais Royal was laid out in just this manner, among the first Paris ''hôtels particuliers'' to have a ''cour d'honneur'', which once was separated from the public street by a wrought iron grille, later by an open architectural screen, with its grand open ''jardin'' behind, now a public space. Nearby, the Tuileries Palace is gone: but the ''cour d'honneur'' with its Arc du Carrousel remains, as do the Tuileries Gardens behind the former palace's site.

In densely built cities disposed on a rigorously democratic grid plan such as New York, private houses with a ''cour d'honneur'' were rare, even in the Gilded Age; the Villard Houses on Madison Avenue and the former William K. Vanderbilt House on the Plaza were the rare exceptions. In London, Burlington House retains its ''cour d'honneur'', whereas Buckingham Palace's is no longer extant, as it was remodeled to be enclosed on all four sides, thus becoming (and now known as) a quadrangle.

File:Villard Exterior 118503pv.jpg, The Villard Houses facing Madison Avenue, New York

Notes

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Architectural history
Courtyards