Évocation de l'habitat patricien à Angers au XIIe siècle

Abstract

Two twelfth-century examples of a patrician residence in Angers. The rise of the city of Angers under the Plantagenêts left behind prestigious twelfth-century monuments as well as archaeological and archival traces of résidences for clergy and patricians. These lodgings, located in the episcopal Cité and in the Doutre ( a quarter on the far shore of the Maine), give a glimpse of a specific monumental and social landscape. Two major edifices that probably belonged to lay lords, the hôtel de « Beauvau-Montiron », which is still standing, and the manor called the «Tower of the Druids » (demolished in 1865), are studied here in detail, and when compared to other buildings, they allow one to sketch a typology of the urban aristocratic manor house. If the « tower manor » illustrated by the « Tower of the Druids » — with its massed plan and its two superposed, vaulted upper rooms — seems to lie a marginal form, the dominant model is the « manor on an elongated plan », with a great hall on the upper floor wonderfully lit by a continuons series of double windows. The hôtel de « Beauvau-Montiron », with a façade 27 meters long, is the most accomplished example. Quite striking in the quarter of the Doutre, its plan seems essentially linked to a thinly populated, semi-rural environment, even if this conception can be found in the more densely settled Cité, for example the bishopric, and constitutes a standard for residences of higher rank.