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Click on the above arrangements and photographs to enlarge. Copyright
Jacques Sigot for the text, as well as stereotypes; except for the mounting numbers 7 above (DR, 10 (old postcard), and 16 (Jacques Wilmet archives).
Warning: This work is personal research conducted from various archives and books, but especially after reading the landscape. It often reflects the views of the author.
Montreuil-Bellay, a small town on the eastern edge of the Anjou, near Poitou and Touraine, kept intact almost all of its medieval walls, and four of its six gates, making it one of the last of the 32 ancient walled cities of Anjou.
Master 0: Wall primitive
A first curved wall locked in the eleventh century dungeon Nerra Fulk had built around 1025, and a small area at its base to house the so-called peasants, first state of what would become the town of Montreuil-Bellay. There had a village at the bottom of the hill, on both banks of the river Thouet composed of mostly cave habitats, This would explain why the ancient parish church stood there. This wall, clay, along the rue du buffet where you can still see the remains. The outer surface has the shot that was later consolidated with ballast.
Photo 1: Tower Bank
In the thirteenth century, Melun-Tancarville, lords of the fief, built a new wall to protect the village that had enlarged. Their successors, Harcourt, have enhanced and completed in the fifteenth.
We begin our walk to the south-west of the old town district of the Ardennes. A path ran along the top edge of the mound and entered through a narrow gate Montreuil, called the Bank, only to pedestrians and riders. Precipice and river side, the door was protected by a tower, Tower Bank, today uncrowned and transformed into a garage.
Photo 2: Rampart and Tower House Dovall
On the left of the photograph, the wall and its circular path, from the level of the river, climb diagonally to reach the upper town. They run twice at right angles to enclose the rooftop garden of the house and earn Dovall then perpendicular edge higher du Tertre. Small corner tower on the corner of the most breathtaking wall.
Photo 3: Bulwark of Nobis
Originally, this section of the wall severely damaged the city closed the low side of the river which bathed its foot. Seems only the upper part, the rest having been buried. The battlements are still well preserved in places.
Photo 4: Tour and bulwark of Boëlle
Boëlle The lower court was the castle where the peasants could take refuge and peasants in times of attack. The tower is bathed in the waters Thouet. It is to his left that the line of the old medieval bridge, finally collapsed in 1577, reached the right bank of the River.
Photo 5: Boëlle
Gate This gate was built in the fifteenth, is one of six monumental wall that opened in the city completed by Harcourt. It is no longer visible since the Lord has condemned its use only after you replaced around 1669 by a new door in the wall near the tower Boëlle. This was to prevent the passage customary in the lower part of his property.
Photo 6: Rampart Moulin du Château
This section was partially demolished around 1669 when it was likely created a path between the lower courtyard of the castle and the river, which was opened a door in the wall of Boëlle near Tower (picture 4). The thickness of the wall on the walkway was torn. Remains a killer.
Photo 7: Porte du Moulin du Château
This door adjoining the old water mill of the castle was in direct communication with the door Boëlle sentenced today (picture 5). Both allow traffic once intense in the lower town along the river on its right bank.
Plate 8: The castles
This photograph, taken by air in 1981, presents all three castles, the medieval kitchen, the collegiate and high during one of which was fitted gardens, all enclosed in a belt of walls punctuated with towers which had the shape of curved staves of the first fortifications Nerra Fulk built in the eleventh century. Successively, from the foreground to the background to the left of the picture: the collegiate, consecrated in 1484, the Old Castle, early XV who took parts of the thirteenth, on his left, the open-throated barbican, the fifteenth, then the central kitchen at home, in part XIII, the Little Castle, also called Logis Canons of the mid-fifteenth on his right, the New Castle, high from 1485 of the former castle of the XIII which we still see the powerful cylindrical towers on the river side. The gable front of us was dressed in the 1860s when major restorations.
On the right of the photograph: the door of the Mill (photo 7) and the old water mill was rebuilt after have burned in 1896, the rampart and tower Boëlle, with the door open in 1669 (photo 4).
Photo 9: The castle on the southwest side.
Tours and curtains of castle built in the thirteenth century to replace the dungeon oblong clay and wood as the eleventh Earl of Anjou Geoffrey the Fair, said Plantagenet, was destroyed in 1851 after a siege of two years, to punish Berlay Giraud, lord of the fief, who had rebelled against his overlord.
Plate 10: New
Gate This gate was so called because it certainly had to replace an old door, on the same journey to the center of the old town, opened in the wall early eleventh century (plate 0). The road had once Saumur followed the right bank of Thouet and crossed the Dive in Saint-Just-sur-Dive. In the fifteenth century, was completed when the new city walls, the great crossing of the upper city was the New Gate to the Porte Saint-Jean.
When the new wall was built straight from the door to the ramparts of the castle, he had to shave some of the old buildings of the suburb built on the hillside. And explain the name it bears today: Razibus.
Photo 11: Rampart and Tower House Toussenel
is where the city wall changes direction to reach the New Gate and the castle against whom she once went up against. It encloses a vast and beautiful property birthplace Toussenel Alphonse (1803-1885), writer, celebrated author of a valuable study on The Spirit animals , son of John Paptiste Tousnel (original spelling), who was appointed mayor of Montreuil by Bonaparte in December 1800.
Photo 12: Tour des Augustins
Although sometimes called Tour of Wisteria, I give this round to the name of the monastery its adjacent monastery built from 1626 to 1641 by the monks of the mendicant order of Augustinian Small. We discover the abbey church on the plate to the right of the tower. Abandoned during the Revolution to become a Temple of Reason, it has been completely restored.
The gap - or moat - which lined the wall was filled in the 1880s, when it was built near the new school boys.
Plate 13: Tour of the Hospital Again
the urban wall changes direction, hence the need for powerful corner tower. The wall protects the old St. John Hospital built in the fifteenth century to replace an old Hotel-Dieu. The church, part of the hospital, was consecrated in 1484.
Photo 14: Porte Saint-Jean Saint-Jean
because it opens directly to the entrance of the old hospital of the same name. The most beautiful city gate, the more curious with its rows of bosses. It claimed it had been copied on one of Jaffa, Palestine; I saw desemblables in Domme, in Provins. One quirk: 15 rows left, 16 right ... Guests who visit the city I always ask me why of these bosses. Add defensive defense? In its website, http://www.archeo-alpi-maritimi.com/bossagesfortifications.php , Barbès Raoul wrote: theory of depreciation of the effect of the projectiles is valid if the projections are uniformly distributed over work. This could be the case of the Porte Saint Jean de Montreuil Bellay where beds are horizontal and regular stones and where the projections are evenly spaced rough. They are more or less square. There are none at the base of the tower to possibly avoid escalation.
sometimes I answer to our visitors it was to impress the attackers, or simply decorative ... And you, what do you think?
Photo 15: Bulwark of Parakeet
The longest straight part of the city walls. It shows very clearly the difference in size of the stones used by small-Melun Tancarville the thirteenth century, larger by Harcourt in the fifteenth. Also in this section it is the highest, without prejudice to what has been buried in the filling of the moat.
Plate 16: Bulwark of Parakeet
This picture, taken by Dr. Jacques Wilmet in the 1960s, shows almost cleared the wall. Since it was built a subdivision that the cache. In Angers, was demolished a row of buildings to enhance the medieval fortress that stands above the Maine Montreuil, we decided to remove this wonderful panorama when intact ...
This shows still on the old cliché of the ouche Parakeet - we say "ouch" in Poitou which took a part-time Montreuil, and "closed" in Anjou - this open area between the outskirts of the Ardennes and the Old Town itself.
bet that our great-grandchildren can admire the line again perfect from the wall when the houses new are gone, ruined by decades. Time, however, knows how things in perspective ...
We arrived at our starting point at the Tour Desk. Thank you for accompanying me in this visit. Montreuil-Bellay closed city of Anjou, Montreuil-Bellay open city.
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