The Château du Grand Jardin was a ''maison de plaisance'' attached to the seat at
Joinville
Joinville () is the largest city in Santa Catarina (state), Santa Catarina, in the Southern Brazil, Southern Region of Brazil. It is the third largest municipality in the southern region of Brazil, after the much larger state capitals of Curitib ...
,
Haute-Marne
Haute-Marne (; English: Upper Marne) is a department in the Grand Est region of Northeastern France. Named after the river Marne, its prefecture is Chaumont. In 2019, it had a population of 172,512.Claude de Lorraine, duc de Guise, who built it between 1533 and 1546 as a grand
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 ...
designed for
fête
In the United Kingdom and some of its former colonies, a fête or fete is a public festival organised to raise money for a charity, typically held outdoors. It generally includes entertainment and the sale of goods and refreshments. Fetes are ty ...
s and entertainments. The ''Château d'en-bas'' (the "Lower Château") as it was called at first, formed an annex to the medieval ''
château fort
A castle is a type of fortification, fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by Military order (monastic society), military orders. Scholars usually consider a ''castle'' to be the private ...
'' overlooking Joinville, a stronghold of the
House of Guise
The House of Guise ( , ; ; ) was a prominent French noble family that was involved heavily in the French Wars of Religion. The House of Guise was the founding house of the Principality of Joinville.
Origin
The House of Guise was founded as a c ...
that was demolished at the French Revolution. In addition to its grand festive hall, which dominated the interior, were a suite of semi-private rooms to which the duke and duchess could withdraw with their most honored guests; they included a '' chamber'' preceded by its antechamber and a more private ''garde-robe'' within, but no bedrooms, as the seat of the Duke, the château de Joinville itself, was so near at hand. The Château du Grand Jardin functioned as a
banqueting house
The Banqueting House, on Whitehall in the City of Westminster, central London, is the grandest and best-known survivor of the architectural genre of banqueting houses, constructed for elaborate entertaining. It is the only large surviving comp ...
on the grandest scale, a fit demonstration of the power and prestige of the head of the House of Guise.
The site, partly in ruins, was purchased at the beginning of the 1980s by the ''conseil général'' of
Haute-Marne
Haute-Marne (; English: Upper Marne) is a department in the Grand Est region of Northeastern France. Named after the river Marne, its prefecture is Chaumont. In 2019, it had a population of 172,512.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 ...
, surrounded by its
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 ...
in the usual French manner, comprises a rectangular ''
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 ...
'' without wings or outbuildings. Richly ornamented, it combines elements of Italian architectural style, under its prominent French slate roof with
dormer
A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a Roof pitch, pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window.
Dormers are commonly used to increase the ...
windows.
The interior is dominated by a vast reception hall. Beneath are wine cellars and kitchens. About 1544 a reception room (''chambre d'apparat'') was added in the northeast corner, and in 1546 a chapel was built at the southern corner, with a
coffered ceiling
A coffer (or coffering) in architecture is a series of sunken panels in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault.
A series of these sunken panels was often used as decoration for a ceiling or a vault, also ...
in the Italian taste. The two ends of the structure contain spiral staircases, with military motifs and the princely monogram enriching the mouldings.
Garden
The remarkable garden, now splendidly restored, once ranked with Villandry, (
Indre-et-Loire
Indre-et-Loire () is a department in west-central France named after the Indre River and Loire River. In 2019, it had a population of 610,079.Chamerolles (Loiret) among the great
French garden
The French formal garden, also called the , is a style of "landscape" garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. Its epitome is generally considered to be the Gardens of Versailles designed during the 17th century ...
s of the 16th century. Swept away in favor of a ''parc à l'anglaise'' in the 19th century, after the site had been purchased in 1856 by the foundry master Pierre Salin Capitaine, then left to run wild, the
parterre
A ''parterre'' is a part of a formal garden constructed on a level substrate, consisting of symmetrical patterns, made up by plant beds, plats, low hedges or coloured gravels, which are separated and connected by paths. Typically it was the ...
was entirely remade in the 1990s to give the ''maison de plaisance'' a setting suited to its festive character. In a space of about four hectares, its shaped compartments are complemented by squares planted with flowers for the altar and aromatics and medicinal herbs. A collection of 365 fruit trees – in their natural state, or pruned as free-standing, or
espalier
Espalier ( or ) is the horticulture, horticultural and ancient Agriculture, agricultural practice of controlling woody plant growth for the production of fruit, by pruning and tying branches to a frame. Plants are frequently shaped in formal patt ...
ed against walls, or free-standing ''palissades en treillage'' – enclose the parterre; they include traditional varieties of apples, pears,
quince
The quince (; ''Cydonia oblonga'') is the sole member of the genus ''Cydonia'' in the Malinae subtribe (which contains apples, pears, and other fruits) of the Rosaceae family. It is a deciduous tree that bears hard, aromatic bright golden-yel ...
s, cherries, and plums.
The English park also remains, as a kind of
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 ...
of specimen trees that include Chinese ''
Ginkgo biloba
''Ginkgo biloba'', commonly known as ginkgo or gingko ( ), also known as the maidenhair tree, is a species of gymnosperm tree native to East Asia. It is the last living species in the order Ginkgoales, which first appeared over 290 million year ...
'', American
bald cypress
''Taxodium distichum'' (baldcypress, bald-cypress, bald cypress, swamp cypress; ;
''cipre'' in Louisiana) is a deciduous conifer in the family Cupressaceae. It is native to the southeastern United States. Hardy and tough, this tree adapts to a w ...
es, ''
Liquidambar
''Liquidambar'', commonly called sweetgum (star gum in the UK), gum, redgum, satin-walnut, styrax or American storax, is the only genus in the flowering plant family Altingiaceae and has 15 species. They were formerly often treated as a part of ...
'' and ''
Liriodendron
''Liriodendron'' () is a genus of two species of characteristically large trees, deciduous tree, deciduous over most of their populations, in the magnolia family (biology), family (Magnoliaceae).
These trees are widely known by the common name ...
'' and the dawn redwood ''
Metasequoia
''Metasequoia'', or dawn redwood, is a genus of fast-growing coniferous trees. It contains one extant (living) species, ''Metasequoia glyptostroboides'', which is one of three extant species of conifers known as redwoods in the world. ''Metaseq ...
''. Water is an important element: the spring feeds a canal that traverses the garden and fills the
moats
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 de ...
, then as a natural brook flows through the park to a small pond.
Though the garden was ravaged by the troops of
Emperor Charles V
Charles V (24 February 1500 – 21 September 1558) was Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria from 1519 to 1556, King of Spain (as Charles I) from 1516 to 1556, and Lord of the Netherlands as titular Duke of Burgundy (as Charles II) fr ...
in 1544, they were restored for the visit of
François I
Francis I (; ; 12 September 1494 – 31 March 1547) was King of France from 1515 until his death in 1547. He was the son of Charles, Count of Angoulême, and Louise of Savoy. He succeeded his first cousin once removed and father-in-law Louis& ...
in 1546; the garden in its heyday was described by the poet Rémy Belleau, a member of
la Pléiade
La Pléiade () was a group of 16th-century French Renaissance poets whose principal members were Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and Jean-Antoine de Baïf. The name was a reference to another literary group, the original Alexandrian Pleia ...
who was serving as tutor to Charles, son of the marquis d'Elboeuf, as "''Le plus beau et le plus accompli qu'on pourrait souhaiter… soit pour le comptant d'arbres fruitiers… soit pour la beauté du parterre''"— "the most beautiful and the most accomplished that one could wish, whether for the number of its fruit trees or for the beauty of the parterre."Belleau, ''La bergerie'', "seconde journée" (1565, published 1572), a bucolic example of the pastoral novel, set at Joinville, noted in the "Dossier pedagogique" to the gardens