The Château de Tanlay at Tanlay (

Yonne Yonne (, in Burgundian: ''Ghienne'') 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 con ...

) is a French

château A château (, ; plural: châteaux) is a manor house, or palace, 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 re ...

built in

Burgundy Burgundy ( ; ; Burgundian: ''Bregogne'') 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. ...

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 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 ...

and approached on axis across a bridge marked by paired

obelisk An obelisk (; , diminutive of (') ' spit, nail, pointed pillar') is a tall, slender, tapered monument with four sides and a pyramidal or pyramidion top. Originally constructed by Ancient Egyptians and called ''tekhenu'', the Greeks used th ...

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 court of honor ( ; ) 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, co ...

'' 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 ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

style is owing to the brother of the Admiral de Coligny, François de Coligny d'Andelot (1521–1569), who inherited the site in ruinous condition in 1547 and whose construction campaigns of 1555-1568 during the Wars of Religion, when Tanlay was a center of

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , ; ) are a Religious denomination, religious group of French people, French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, ...

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 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 ; ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a Two-dimensional space, two-dimensional surface. , which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into perceiving p ...

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