As the title suggests, there’s a fun little poll on the best creature at Château de Pierrefonds included in this post. If you don’t want to scroll to the bottom of the page like an annoying cooking blog, you can access it here.
Yesterday I visited Château de Pierrefonds, about an hour northeast of Paris via train, with some of my friends. It was originally built in the late 1300s, mostly demolished in 1617 and rebuilt by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc starting in 1857. Now, anyone in my class who is reading this will know le-Duc. He was a hugely influential early preservationist who was involved in reconstruction projects in his time. However, his philosophy was that buildings should be restored to what they should have been had people at the time had the resources (or had his modern perspective on architecture). So, the Château de Pierrefonds is more of what le-Duc thought a medieval castle should look like rather than one that has truly survived from the medieval ages.
L: The château today R: Photograph taken before le-Duc started his reconstruction
Now that I’ve proved I engaged in an educational activity so I can maybe get a refund for my ticket from the university, we can get onto the real topic of this post. This castle was filled with the weirdest, most wonderful depictions of creatures. The first thing we saw walking into the courtyard was a downspout shaped like a lizard and that really set the tone for the whole trip. These elements were designed by le-Duc too! The man asked himself what a medieval castle needs to have and came up with pelican-frog statues and bug-themed wallpaper.
I have created a little poll where you, dear reader, can vote for which of these creates you like the best. You can access it here and the options are listed below. The results will be published in a future post!
Griffon? wearing shoes
What Balder’s Gate III players will recognize as a Mind Flayer
Pelican-frog
Feathered snake coming out of a helmet
Pole dancing lion
Snake-bird-frog
Anthropomorphized snail playing an instrument
And finally, the lizard shaped downspout
I hope you have some fun with this silliness. I certainly had a wonderful time and while I don’t write much about it here, it was a beautiful structure in a picturesque small French town.
I’ll be writing soon with the results!
Laurie
2 Comments
These creature statues are so cool and I love that you included an interactive pole! Even though its not technically an original medieval castle, its interesting to see how le-Duc thought one should look and the unique elements that he added.
The pelican statue alone should get our tickets refunded! I’m glad you created a gallery of all the crazy creature statues we found as it really summarizes our trip to the castle (alongside all the educational history of course)