Rohan Castle: An Episcopal Palace and Municipal Cultural Complex in Saverne
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- French, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Palace
On this page14 sections
History
Rohan Castle is an eighteenth-century neoclassical palace in Saverne, France, built for the prince-bishops of Strasbourg, who governed the ecclesiastical principality of Strasbourg within the Holy Roman Empire. Saverne had served as the principality’s capital from the thirteenth century, and the bishops often resided there because of political rivalries with the citizens of Strasbourg. The present palace replaced earlier residences and was constructed between approximately 1779 and 1790, although the French Revolution halted its completion.
Medieval and Renaissance residences
The earliest episcopal residence at Saverne was a medieval castle that incorporated the northern corner of a former Roman fort. In the early fifteenth century, traditionally dated to 1417, it was replaced by the nearby Château Vieux beside the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Nativité. Prince-Bishop Albert of Palatinate-Mosbach, who held office from 1478 to 1506, enlarged that residence.
A Renaissance castle was later built on the site. It suffered heavy damage during the Peasants’ War in 1525 and was subsequently rebuilt. Neglect under the prince-bishops, together with the sieges of Saverne in 1622 and 1636 during the Thirty Years’ War, contributed to the building’s deterioration.
The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century palace
Prince-Bishop Franz Egon von Fürstenberg-Heiligenberg ordered the surviving buildings demolished and replaced between 1667 and 1670. The new complex had four wings arranged around an approximately square plan, and a 110-metre-long wing was later added on its southeastern side. The architect is unknown, although Antoine Coysevox and Claude Audran the Younger took part in the interior decoration.
Four successive eighteenth-century prince-bishops from the Rohan family continued to expand the palace: Armand Gaston Maximilien de Rohan-Soubise, Armand II François Auguste de Rohan-Soubise, Louis César Constantin de Rohan-Guéméné, and Louis René Édouard de Rohan-Guéméné. The Rohan family was a prominent French aristocratic and ecclesiastical dynasty, and several of its members served as prince-bishops of Strasbourg. The palace hosted two marriages of Charles, Prince de Soubise, in 1741 and 1745.
A major fire in September 1779 destroyed the baroque palace and its furnishings. Cardinal Louis René Édouard de Rohan-Guéméné commissioned a more ambitious replacement, begun by Nicolas-Alexandre Salins de Montfort around 1779 to 1780. A cardinal was a senior official of the Roman Catholic Church who could serve as a papal adviser and, when eligible by age, an elector of the pope. Construction continued until 1790, when the French Revolution interrupted the work before the interior had been completed.
Louis René Édouard de Rohan-Guéméné never occupied the new palace. The Affair of the Diamond Necklace led to his exile from 1786 to 1788, and the Revolution confiscated ecclesiastical property while abolishing the clerical administration that governed the principality. The unfinished palace was confiscated and nationalized after the Revolution.
Military and civic transformations
The nationalized building was temporarily used as a barracks and remained vacant until 1803. It was later transferred to the city of Saverne. An attempted transfer to the Legion of Honour did not result in its rehabilitation, and parts of the complex were sold as building material. The principal Salins de Montfort wing served as a barracks again from 1815 to 1818, while the complex had further military use in 1830.
Napoleon III supported the rebuilding and enlargement of the palace to house widows of high-ranking military officers and officials. Alphonse Lejeune carried out the conversion between 1853 and 1857. It created 78 apartments and 130 servants’ rooms, but occupancy remained low: 15 apartments were occupied in 1862 and 18 in 1871.
After the Franco-Prussian War, the palace became a German military barracks in 1871. From 1890 it housed the 2nd Upper Rhine Infantry Regiment No. 99, which was associated with the Saverne Affair of 1913. The French military used the building as a barracks after the First World War. During and after the Second World War, it was used successively by the German army and the United States Army, although it no longer had a permanent garrison.
The palace became a municipal museum in 1858 and, after further changes of use, a municipal cultural institution in 1952. It belongs to the city of Saverne and contains the city museum, a primary school, a youth hostel, the Espace Rohan cultural venue, and additional theatre and event rooms. The museum’s collections include historical, decorative-arts, archaeological, and ethnographic material, including the Louise Weiss collection. The palace and grounds received French historic-monument protection in stages in 1933, 1934, and 1995.
Remains
The neoclassical palace
Rohan Castle is an eighteenth-century neoclassical palace built mainly of red Vosges sandstone. Neoclassicism drew on the architectural forms and orders of ancient Greece and Rome. The principal facade facing the park is approximately 140 metres wide and presents the palace as a long, formally ordered composition. The building incorporates the Salins de Montfort palace of approximately 1779 to 1790 together with extensive alterations made in the nineteenth century.
Principal facade
The principal facade is arranged around a seven-bay central avant-corps, two three-bay end avant-corps, and intervening eleven-bay wings articulated by Corinthian pilasters. An avant-corps is a section that projects outward from the main facade. The central section contains eight free-standing Corinthian columns and is crowned by an attic whose projecting side sections carry cast-iron Napoleonic eagles from the period of the Napoleon III remodeling.
The palace has two principal stories, with mezzanine levels between the main floors and beneath the roof. A mezzanine is an intermediate floor inserted between two principal stories. The city-side facade was created during the 1853 to 1857 remodeling and displays Second Empire eclectic decoration and imperial insignia. The Second Empire was the regime of Napoleon III, whose architecture frequently combined historical styles with symbols of imperial rule.
Entrance and court of honour
The main entrance occupies the central avant-corps on the city side. It opens onto a court of honour, a formal forecourt enclosed or framed by the buildings of a palace or institutional complex. The court faces Saverne’s marketplace and is separated from it by an ornamental iron grille and two gatekeeper pavilions. When the palace served as a barracks, the pavilions functioned as guardhouses.
Interior spaces and archaeological collections
Only limited eighteenth-century interior decoration survives, together with a small amount of nineteenth-century decoration. The entrance hall, principal staircase, and a ceremonial hall remain among the preserved interior elements. The vaulted cellars are especially substantial and accommodate the museum’s archaeological department, whose displays include Roman-period finds from Saverne and its surroundings.
The nineteenth-century conversion altered the internal arrangement by dividing the principal floor horizontally with a mezzanine. Relief sculptures that had stood between the ground- and upper-floor windows were removed to create space for additional windows. Some of the reliefs were reused in a retaining wall east of the palace, while replacement reliefs were installed around the central avant-corps on the garden facade.
Earlier buildings and surviving evidence
The former complex included the square four-winged castle, a large main residential wing, stables, service buildings, gardens, and a later pavilion. Two wings of the square castle were demolished in 1819. Its northwestern wing had previously been converted into the town hall before it was removed, and one stable wing was destroyed in 1846. The remaining fabric of the square castle was demolished during the 1853 to 1857 conversion.
The museum preserves models of earlier building phases and vanished gardens, as well as a small number of relics associated with the complex’s former uses. The Espace Rohan occupies part of the palace and includes a 500-seat theatre and concert hall, integrating the historic building into the city’s cultural institutions.
Former gardens and park landscape
Terraces and ornamental grounds
The palace gardens changed repeatedly over the eighteenth century. Robert de Cotte redesigned them in the early 1700s, and further work took place from 1716 to 1731. The grounds were enlarged between 1756 and 1777. Their formal layout included two broad terraces descending toward an embroidered parterre, a geometrically arranged ornamental garden bed, together with a large basin, statues, vases, an orchard, groves, lawns, and a landscape garden.
Canal and lake system
A straight canal formed the central axis of the former garden. Approximately four kilometres long, it was supplied by the Zorn and included locks, overflow channels, basins, and waterfalls. Its large basin measured about 130 by 220 metres. The canal was about 60 metres wide and, after roughly 2.5 kilometres, was interrupted by a circular lake about 260 metres in diameter.
Island pavilion and surrounding grounds
A four-story Chinese-style tea pavilion stood on a central island in the circular lake. Nicolas-Alexandre Salins de Montfort designed it, and it was built between 1783 and 1786. Salins de Montfort also designed furniture and a Chinese kiosk on an island in the grand canal. South of the canal lay a pheasantry covering several square kilometres, while a wooded area with radiating hunting paths extended to the north.
The park was divided into 180 parcels and sold after nationalization during the Revolution. From 1853 onward, the Marne-Rhine Canal cut through the former garden landscape and now borders the castle on two sides. The historic grounds were largely built over; the remaining area was used as a military drill ground and is now a municipal event space, with few garden features surviving.
The palace’s eighteenth-century furnishings do not survive at Rohan Castle, including Louis René de Rohan’s extensive collection of Qing porcelain and lacquerware. Surviving pieces are displayed in the Rohan Palace in Strasbourg. The former gardens and the successive palace buildings are chiefly represented at Saverne through the surviving complex, museum displays, and models of features that have disappeared.
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