Château de Vizille: A Historic Château and Home of the Musée de la Révolution française
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page15 sections
History
Château de Vizille is a château in Vizille, France, rebuilt in medieval and Renaissance architectural forms between about 1600 and 1619. Its history extends from a medieval stronghold and Dauphin residence to the estate of François de Bonne, duke of Lesdiguières, and the setting of the 1788 Assembly of Vizille, an important precursor to the French Revolution.
Medieval stronghold and royal residence
A château at Vizille is first recorded in 996, when Humbert d’Albon, bishop of Grenoble, donated half of the castle, the borough, and its priory to Cluny Abbey. The early fortifications were probably modest and occupied the rocky spur around which the town developed.
By the thirteenth century, the château had become a permanent residence of the Dauphin’s family and a center of regional authority. The Dauphiné was a historic province in southeastern France traditionally associated with the heir to the French throne. After the province was incorporated into the royal domain in 1456, the château became known as the Château du Roi, or King’s Château, while the upper part of the rocky spur acquired the name “King’s Garden.”
Wars of Religion and the Lesdiguières rebuilding
During the Wars of Religion, the conflict between Catholics and Protestants that divided France in the sixteenth century, a Catholic garrison occupied the château from 1562. Protestant forces attacked and captured it, but the Edict of Amboise restored the château to the Catholics in 1563.
François de Bonne, first duke of Lesdiguières, bought the estate in 1593 and began rebuilding the medieval château. Lesdiguières was a leading military commander, governor of the Dauphiné, companion-in-arms of King Henry IV, and the last constable of France. A masonry inspection on 30 October 1593 found the Château du Roi and its walls largely collapsed. Only the foundations and part of the enclosure linking the château to the rocky spur remained.
Major construction probably took place from about 1600 to 1619 under Pierre La Cuisse and, from 1617, Guillaume Le Moyne. The estate expanded from 1600, and a formal French-style park was created. After Lesdiguières died, the park was abandoned.
Lesdiguières inheritance and the Perier estate
Ownership passed through the Lesdiguières family to Charles de Créquy, second duke of Lesdiguières; François de Bonne de Créquy, third duke; François Emmanuel de Bonne de Créquy, fourth duke and governor of the Dauphiné; Jean François Paul de Bonne de Créquy; and Alphonse de Créquy, count of Canaples and sixth duke of Lesdiguières. Because Jean François Paul and Alphonse died without issue, the estate passed to Paule Marguerite de Gondi and then through the Neufville family. Its later owners included François Paul de Neufville de Villeroy, archbishop of Lyon, his brother Louis Nicolas de Neufville, third duke of Villeroy, and Louis Nicolas’s grandson Gabriel Louis François de Neufville, fifth duke of Villeroy.
Gabriel Louis François de Neufville sold the estate in 1780 to Claude Perier, a banker and industrialist. Perier established a textile-printing manufactory in one wing of the château, giving the building an industrial use alongside its residential history.
The Assembly of Vizille
On 21 July 1788, after the Day of the Tiles in Grenoble, Perier received the assembly of the three orders of the Dauphiné in the old château’s jeu de paume hall. A jeu de paume hall was an enclosed court for an early racket sport. The meeting had been prohibited in Grenoble by Marshal de Vaux, the lieutenant-general of the Dauphiné, and became known as the Assembly of Vizille.
The assembly brought together representatives of the clergy, nobility, and Third Estate, the three orders traditionally represented in the Estates-General. It demanded the convocation of the national Estates-General and reforms to representation and voting. These demands helped prepare the political crisis that began the French Revolution.
Nineteenth-century changes and damage
After Claude Perier’s death in 1801, the estate passed to his son Augustin Perier and, in 1833, to his grandson Adolphe-Joseph-Scipion Perier. Adolphe Perier married one of the granddaughters of the Marquis de La Fayette. In 1834, the park was redesigned as an English-style garden.
After Adolphe Perier died, the estate was auctioned in 1862 and acquired by Henry-Frédéric Fontenilliat, who continued restoration work, including work on the monumental staircase. It subsequently passed to his daughter Camille Fontenilliat and her husband Auguste Casimir-Perier.
A fire in 1865 damaged the east wing, where the jeu de paume hall and the great gallery of battles were located. These rooms were among the last surviving witnesses of the 1788 Assembly of Vizille, but they were demolished the following year. The château had already been classified as a monument historique in 1862, a French legal designation protecting historically or architecturally important buildings, sites, and landscapes.
State ownership and museum
The Casimir-Perier family retained the estate until 1895. After passing through several private owners, it was acquired by the French state in 1924 to prevent the dismemberment of a site regarded as an important place of republican history and tradition.
The château received visits from La Fayette, Casimir Perier, Adolphe Thiers, Sadi Carnot, and Jean Jaurès. Five presidents of the French Republic stayed there between 1925 and 1960: Gaston Doumergue, Albert Lebrun, Vincent Auriol, René Coty, and Charles de Gaulle. Coty spent each summer there from 1954 to 1958, while de Gaulle made the final presidential visit during the night of 6 to 7 October 1960.
The state transferred the little-used estate to the Department of Isère in 1973. In 1983, in preparation for the bicentenary of the French Revolution, the collections of the Musée de la Révolution française were installed in the château, which now serves as the museum’s home. The nearby house and mill and the wall enclosing the estate were partially registered in 1989, while the courtyard and park were classified in 1991. Since 2005, the garden has held the “Remarkable Garden of France” designation.
A local legend says that the enclosing wall was built in a single night by the devil and his demons in a pact with François de Bonne. Lesdiguières supposedly saved his soul by jumping his horse over unfinished masonry, leaving part of the horse’s tail embedded in the wall. The château and the Perier family archives comprise 125 linear metres of records, now preserved in the Departmental Archives of Isère.
Remains
The Château de Vizille stands within the 100-hectare Domaine de Vizille, approximately at the center of Vizille and about 16 kilometres southeast of Grenoble. The estate occupies the slopes and ruins of the earlier medieval structure on the rocky spur of Vizille. The present château combines architectural vocabulary derived from medieval and Renaissance styles. Its elevated position and strongly defensive, almost military character reflect the strategic concerns of François de Bonne, a military commander governing a province exposed to conflict.
Château and surviving fabric
The current building occupies the site of the medieval château. Its foundations and part of the enclosure connecting the château to the rocky spur survived the earlier collapse and provided the physical basis for the rebuilding directed by Pierre La Cuisse and Guillaume Le Moyne. A tunnel was cut through the hill on which the château stands during the early nineteenth century.
The surviving rooms accommodate the Musée de la Révolution française. Restoration work included the monumental staircase. The east wing once contained the jeu de paume hall and the great gallery of battles, but the fire of 1865 damaged these rooms and they were demolished in 1866.
Park and water system
Formal waterworks
The original French-style park included a rectilinear water feature and a great canal 800 metres long, extending in front of the château. The forecourt contained four parterres, formal garden compartments arranged in ornamental beds and separated by paths or channels. These compartments were divided by channels forming a cross around an oval basin with a fountain and a statue of Hercules.
English-style grounds
The park was redesigned in the nineteenth century as an English-style landscape. Its protected features include the enclosing wall, garden enclosures, entrance avenue, water feature, and the staircase associated with the water feature. A tunnel cut through the hill during the early nineteenth century forms part of the estate’s altered physical setting.
Rose garden and Hercules statue
A rose garden planted in 1910 by Count Alberto Garone was repaired after the state acquired the estate in 1924. Since 2008, it has contained a bronze copy of the Hercules Lesdiguières statue. The original statue, commissioned in the sixteenth century, is held by the Musée de Grenoble.
Springs, meadow, and ponds
The estate’s water features are supplied by springs at the rear of the park, including the Dhuy and Reine springs. The grounds contain several hundred varieties of ornamental trees, including about sixty described as rare, among them Atlas cedar, Lebanon cedar, and liquidambar.
A belvedere overlooks a 60-hectare meadow used by herds of red deer, sika deer, and fallow deer. The ponds contain swans, ducks, Canada geese, Vizille trout, and large carp. Enclosures at the back of the garden contain goats, sheep, chickens, and three blue peafowl.
Associated estate buildings
The estate includes a house and a mill near the château, together with the wall enclosing the domain. These elements form part of the wider physical complex surrounding the château and its park.
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