The Château de Tanlay at

Tanlay Tanlay () is a commune in the Yonne department in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in north-central France. See also * Château de Tanlay * Communes of the Yonne department The following is a list of the 423 communes of the Yonne department of Franc ...

(

Yonne Yonne () is a department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in France. It is named after the river Yonne, which flows through it, in the country's north-central part. One of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté's eight constituent departments, it is lo ...

) is a French

château A château (; plural: châteaux) is a manor house or residence of the lord of the manor, or a fine country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally, and still most frequently, in French-speaking regions. Nowaday ...

built in

Burgundy Burgundy (; french: link=no, Bourgogne ) is a historical territory and former administrative region and province of east-central France. The province was once home to the Dukes of Burgundy from the early 11th until the late 15th century. The c ...

during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, famous for its beauty and the setting. The walls are of limestone under tall sloping slate roofs ''à la française'', surrounding three sides of a central court with cylindrical towers at its four corners. The château is entirely encircled by its rectilinear

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 approached on axis across a bridge marked by paired

obelisk An obelisk (; from grc, ὀβελίσκος ; diminutive of ''obelos'', " spit, nail, pointed pillar") is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape or pyramidion at the top. Originally constructed by Anc ...

s through a gatehouse (''illustration'') built in 1558, which straddles the low balustrade and projects forward into the moat. The perfect symmetry of the ''

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 wit ...

'' is part of Tanlay's serene charm. Chateau_Tanlay_fresques_Tour_de_la_Ligue

The foundations are in part those of the thirteenth-century ''château-fort''. The rebuilding in

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

style is owing to the brother of the

Admiral de Coligny Gaspard de Coligny (16 February 1519 – 24 August 1572), Seigneur de Châtillon, was a French nobleman, Admiral of France, and Huguenot leader during the French Wars of Religion. He served under kings Francis I and Henry II during the Ita ...

François de Coligny d'Andelot François d'Andelot de Coligny (18 April 1521, Châtillon-sur-Loing - 27 May 1569, Saintes, Charente-Maritime) was one of the leaders of French Protestantism during the French Wars of Religion. The son of Gaspard I de Coligny, he was the younger ...

(1521–1569), who inherited the site in ruinous condition in 1547 and whose construction campaigns of 1555-1568 during the

Wars of Religion A religious war or a war of religion, sometimes also known as a holy war ( la, sanctum bellum), is a war which is primarily caused or justified by differences in religion. In the modern period, there are frequent debates over the extent to wh ...

, when Tanlay was a center of

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...

resistance, left the residence uncompleted. Building was recommenced afterwards by Michel Particeli d'Hemery, the ''surintendant de finance'' under Mazarin, who completed the château to designs by

Pierre Le Muet Pierre Le Muet (7 October 1591 – 28 September 1669)Mignot 1996. was a French architect, military engineer, and writer, famous for his book ''Manière de bâtir pour toutes sortes de personnes'' (1623 and 1647), and for the châteaux he construc ...

between 1643 and 1649.The dates are given by Claude Mignot. Since 1700 the property has remained in the family of the man who was created marquis de Tanlay in 1705. The house is also renowned for its gallery painted in ''

trompe-l'œil ''Trompe-l'œil'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into ...

'' and for the frescoes in the ''Tour de la Ligue'' ("Tower of the Huguenot League"), in which the antagonists of the War are represented in the guise of Olympic deities, and for its mellow stone and its remarkable canal, moats and grounds, which include a

nymphaeum A ''nymphaeum'' or ''nymphaion'' ( grc, νυμφαῖον), in ancient Greece and Rome, was a monument consecrated to the nymphs, especially those of springs. These monuments were originally natural grottoes, which tradition assigned as habit ...

or ''théâtre d'eau'' by Pierre Le Muet.

Notes

References

*Claude Mignot, 2005. bibliographical note on Pierre Le Muet, ''Maniere de bien bastir...'' 2nd ed. 1645. The auxiliary volume added to the second edition, 1647, includes plans and elevations of Tanlay.

External links

Tanlay viewed from the airTanlay official Web site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chateau de Tanlay Houses completed in 1649

Historic and archaeological sites in Burgundy Historic house museums in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Museums in Yonne 1649 establishments in France