|
|
|
|
| |
| Architecture in Aix-en-Provence |
|
|
|
| |
 The Bourg-Saint-Sauveur may or may not have been as it is depîcted
by the fifteenth century artist of the chapelle Saint Mitre . Whatever
the truth of the matter, it is safe to say that street plans of Aix
north of the Cours Mirabeau reflect an interlaced, muddled labyrinth
of "sheep tracks" now trodden by flocks of tourists, students
and Aixois. An aerial view of the streets around Saint Sauveur, on
the other hand, shows successive ovals, suggesting that they imitated
the pattern of ramparts whose centre was the cathedral itself. To
the south, in the ville des comtes houses rise four and five storeys
high, their external resemblance to one another belying the rich variety
of their interiors and the yard/garden space within. Convents, chapels,
stables, vaulted chambers and elegant cloisters have been absorbed
and molded into blocks of apartments only some of which retain the
outward and visible signs of their origin. The hotel des Augustins,
and the bookstore of the same Order in the rue Espariat, the hôtel
du Manoir with its Franciscan cloister, and the restaurant l’Abbaye
des Cordeliers in the rue Lieutaud invite inspection. |
| |
|
|
If
it is true but regrettable that much of the Middle Ages lies
buried in the accretions of succeeding centuries There remain,
nevertheless, fragments of the fourteenth century ramparts
which have been restored on either side of the rue Jacques
de la Roque and the imposing Tourreluque , a substantial bastion
for the defence of the city on the Boulevard Jean Jaures.
The
sixteenth century has left behind two intact (almost) remarkable
buildings, one as far beyond the ramparts to the north as
Saint Jean de Malte is to the south. The Hôpital
Saint Jacques, a model of sturdy, practical, purpose building
for the benefit
of the sick, the needy, and the aged, though crowded in by
more recent additions of less noble stature and design,
remains a
landmark of interest, both for its impressive proportions
and sobriety. In contrast, its contemporary, the hôtel
Peyroneti, n° 13 rue Aude, is unique, an elegant Renaissance display
cabinet, embellished in 1649 by a portal of vermiculated stone
that distinguishes it from all other Aix town houses. |
|
| |
Dominating
the hodgepodge of styles and epochs, plastered over by the imperativess
of need, taste, and economy, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
reign, both by their quantity and by the quality of their conservation. The
cours (Mirabeau), the quartier Mazarin that lies to its
south, the handsome archbishopric and adjacent mansions, Villeverte,
and Villeneuve, neither green nor new, the City Hall, the Halle aux
Grains, its neighbour, the Place d’Albertas, the hôtel
de Valbonne, raise their voice in a harmony that blends easily with
their neighbours, not strident, never vulgar, though conscious of
the need to “belong” and the grandeur thus implied. |
| |
The
"town mansions" known as hôtels particuliers, may, by their
contiguity, remind one of the rowhouses that disfigure the industrial
towns of the nineteenth century except, of course, for their scale,
their distinctive exteriors and interiors, and their evident satisfaction
at being at the top rather than at the bottom of an economic and social
scale. |
| |
In
1647 a straight line, 440 meters long and 42 meters wide, was drawn
across the southern perimeter of the ville des comtes ;
it replaced ramparts, lists, and ditches that separated the "archbishop’s
meadows" from the ville des comtes. A building site
on a scale unknown since the days of the Roman colony (15 B.C.)
restored Aix-en-Provence to its former eminence. Intended as a
carriageway, the cours was not accessible from the Marseille
road ; the land bordering it was sold by archbishop Mazarin, brother
to the
cardinal, and divided into lots. These were snapped up by members
of the parliamentary council, the nobility, the military, magistrates,
lawyers, merchants, tax collectors, officers and representatives
of the king, the court, and the church. The treasury, (cour
des comptes) and members of the parlement, were sufficently
numerous and prosperous to plan, finance, and inhabit a Provençal Champs
Elysées.
|
|
|
|
| |
The Quartier
Mazarin did not, however, mushroom overnight, nor did building
begin in instantaneous obedience to Michel Mazarin’s prophetic
vision. *(Coste, Aix-en-Provence et le Pays d’Aix, p.75 plan
de Cundler 1680) The baroque and the classical find in the hôtels
particuliers of Aix-en-Provence common ground that curbs tendency
to excess on the one hand and frozen symmetry on the other. Whereas,
to the
north
of the cours the hôtels are disposed according
to the illogical but picturesque whims inherited
from their Roman and mediaeval forebears, those of the new neighbourhoods
conformed to a linear Cartesian logic, handsome in proportions, seemly,
restrained, and even playful in their decorative motifs. |
| |
|
|
|
The
Hôtel
de Maurel de Ponteves, famous for its long suffering Telamones,
exemplifies a certain standard in orientation, height, proportion,
and, to a lesser extent, decoration. It faces north, its main
entrance, Italian style, giving directly onto the cours.
The façade of each house bears the stamp of originality,
respecting the proportions, dimensions, materials, and decorative
variables characteristic of the seventeenth and eighteeth centuries.
While affirming each its own personality, the hôtels
particuliers of the cours are remarkably similar in
the manner in which they occupy their allotted space. They share
the Roman tiled roofs common to almost all "vieil Aix", their
walled gardens, artfully planted to give the impression of greater
space, the fountain, refreshingly cool, the shade of a chestnut
tree, and the outbuildings shielding them from the streets that
border their southern flank.
|
|
| |
Generalisation
gives to the exception its particular savour. In this case, and worth
a visit for that reason alone the Hôtel de Caumont, which
now houses the Music Conservatory in the rue Cabasssol. stands handsome
and aloof, facing west instead of north like all its neighbours, its
courtyard in front and garden behind, plum in the middle of its plot.
Its orginal orientation and its elegant, sober, aristocratic air must
have raised a few eyebrows in the quartier Mazarin. |
| |
 |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
