Chateau de Vincennes

The town of Vincennes is a suburb of Paris, found immediately to the east of the city.  Today there is almost no distinction between the two areas if you were to walk from the outskirts of Paris into Vincennes, but it used to be a completely separate town that was considered one of the "entrances" to Paris.

Medieval European cities were often walled, and Paris was no exception.  Vincennes was sort of the guard of Paris' easternmost "porte" (literally, door), so travelers or invading armies coming from that direction would have had to go in or very close to Vincennes.

In the 12th century the area between Paris and the town of Vincennes was a royal hunting forest, and the kings had a small hunting lodge just on the outskirts of the town.  But because this relatively small residence had such a good military location it was gradually fortified for nearly 200 years, until finally in 1337 Philip VI turned it into a real fortress [castle] by building the keep (the tall part in this picture).  His son continued his work, building the walls you see here at the base of the keep.

For three hundred or so years it was used as both a fortification and a royal residence.  It's one of the best preserved fortresses from this time period that I've ever visited, excepting the Tower of London.  Here is the gate into the keep itself (which one can only get to by crossing the first moat and gate area, the second moat and gate area), and below the top part of the walls.  They're very thick and solid; it would be hard to take this castle.

It was considered safe enough that the royal treasury - all the king and crown's jewels and valuable objects - were kept here when not with the king himself.

In the later 1600's Louis XIV, who built Versailles as his residence and was not particularly worried about foreign invasion, turned it into a prison for highborn prisoners of state.  By all accounts it was a pretty comfortable prison during this time.  This lasted about a century, and it had such illustrious prisoners as Voltaire, Mirabeau, Diderot, and the Marquis de Sade.  

You can still see where some prisoners carved their names and dates into the walls of the castle, and sometimes where they painted graffiti of designs or original poems, things like that.  Here is graffiti, but I can't find a good picture of the carvings.

My mom really wanted to show how big these locks were by placing me next to them.

And just for fun, here is a cemented up latrine.

A couple of the prisoners had enough freedom to design their conception of the "library of the universe," where all the important books are that have never been written.  They designed the books and the titles (things like, the secret lives of important philosophers, scientific ideas that hadn't been invented, etc) and made them oversized.

During the Revolution (late 18th century) all kinds of prisoners were kept there, and often many more to a room than had been intended when it was originally converted into a prison.  At that time it was also used as an arsenal for the revolutionary army. 

The Napoleons continued to use it as a prison and arsenal, and often for the next century plus it served as a housing and training ground for much of the French army.  There is still an army fort right next door to the castle.

In World War I the army was there, and executed some accused spies against the walls, including the notorious Mata Hari.  The French army defending Paris was based there in the beginning of World War II, and at the end it was the center for the German SS retreating from Normandy after D Day.

So this fortress has seen over 700 years of military action, and it has a very interesting history in that sense.  But as I mentioned, it was also a royal residence and some other areas of the grounds are much more for that than military operations.

Here is the area behind the castle, added during the Renaissance primarily by Marie de Medici (the formidable queen of Henri IV, also the same lady who commissioned the Luxembourg palace and gardens in Paris).

And in there is a pretty chapel in the middle of the grounds, which was meant to serve the royal family and probably their highborn prisoners.  It's no longer a working chapel and pretty empty, so there isn't much to see except the architecture and stained glass.

The Chateau de Vincennes sits on the edge of the Bois [forest] of Vincennes, a large park that is what remains of the old royal hunting grounds.  We didn't see too much of it because it's very big, but we did go to the botanical gardens.  My mom of course adores plants so she was pleased with it.  The landscaping is really quite beautiful.  It also has some of the biggest ducks I've ever seen!  My favorite part was a section showing various types of food and botanical plants, like herbs and such.  I know little about plants so it was kind of cool to see what all that stuff looks like before I cook it.

Next time: some more stories of the ladies of the Luxembourg gardens, and continuing adventures of me and my mother during her visit here!