Le château de vincennes

Vincennes is a commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris. It is located 6.7 km (4.2 miles) from the center of Paris. The city is famous for its castle, the Château de Vincennes, and its park, the Bois de Vincennes. It also features a large military fort, now housing various army services.

Histoire

The Château de Vincennes is a massive 14th and 17th century French royal castle. Like other more famous châteaux it had its origins in a hunting lodge, set up for Louis VII about 1150 in the forest of Vincennes. In the 13th century, Philip Augustus and Louis IX erected a more substantial manor. To strengthen the site, a donjon tower, 52 meters high, the tallest medieval fortified structure of Europe was added by the Valois Philippe VI, a work that was started about 1337. The grand rectangular circuit of walls, measuring more than a kilometer in length (330 x 175m), with six towers and three gates, each 42 meters high, was completed by the Valois about two generations later (ca. 1410). In the 17th century the architect Louis Le Vau built for Louis XIV a pair of isolated ranges mirroring one another across a parterre to one side of the keep, suited for the Queen Mother and Cardinal Mazarin, but rebuilding was never pursued once Versailles occupied all attentions. Some splendid apartments show the earliest phase of Louis XIV style, before the example of Vaux-le-Vicomte presented the Sun King with a worthy model. The unlucky builder of Vaux, the minister Nicolas Fouquet found himself transferred to Vincennes, to much less comfortable lodgings. Abandoned in the 18th century, the château still served, first as the site of the Vincennes porcelain manufactory, the precursor to Sèvres, then as a state prison, which housed the marquis de Sade, Diderot and Mirabeau, and then in 1796 an arms manufactory, suiting it to its current occupants, the historical sections of the French Armed Services.The execution of the duc d'Enghien was effected at the château in 1804, and during the Nazi occupation, 30 hostages were murdered on August 20, 1944.
The park was landscaped in the English landscape style in the 19th century. It has an area of 9.947 km? (3.841 sq. miles, or 2,458 acres), which is almost three times larger than Central Park in New York, and four times larger than Hyde Park in London.
Originally a hunting preserve for the kings of France, it became a military exercise area after the French revolution. It was made into a public park by Napoleon III in 1860. The Bois de Vincennes was officially annexed by the city of Paris in 1929, and was incorporated into the XIIe arrondissement.
The Bois de Vincennes is home to several sports venues. In the eastern part lies a hippodrome specialising in trotting races. There is also a velodrome, and the French national institute of sports and physical education.
In the west is a 14.5ha zoo, permanently created in 1934 in place of a smaller temporary zoo constructed for the 1931 exhibition. The zoo breeds Asian elephants and its most notable feature is a 65m high monolith, home to a herd of mouflons. The Bois de Vincennes is home to four lakes, fed from the Marne River.
LINK : official site of Vincennes