🔎 Dauphiné Parliament Palace

Introduction

the Dauphiné Parliament Palace is a historic building dating, for its oldest part, from the end of the XV^e century. Seat of the Parliament of Dauphiné until the Revolution, then courthouse (A courthouse contains a court or other jurisdiction, its administration and miscellaneous…) until 2002, it was located on place Saint-André in Grenoble.

Historical

Entrance to the Palace of Parliament

Coat of arms on the facade of the parliament

In 1453, King Louis XI transformed the Delphin Council, created in 1337 by Humbert II, into a sovereign court of justice called the Dauphiné Parliament. It was the third created in France, after Paris (Paris is a French city, capital of France and the capital of the region…) and Toulouse.

It gave Grenoble a valuable asset and allowed it to establish the role of town (A city is an urban unit (a “human settlement” for…) as capital city (A capital (from the Latin caput, capitis, head) is a city where the powers sit,…) provincial. Indeed, in France before 1789, the presence of a parliament ensured a city a special dignity and obvious profits.

In 1478, he decided to lodge it with dignity in the Place Saint-André in the immediate vicinity of the Delphin Palace, which until then had housed the Delphin Council. But work on the oldest parts (in the center looking at the facade) did not begin until around 1500, under Louis XII. Built in stone White (White is the color of a body heated to about 5000°C (see…) cream from the Échaillon quarry, this Gothic-style part flamboyant (Flamboyant is an ambiguous vernacular name designating in French certain trees of the…) includes the apsidiole projecting from a Chapel (A chapel is a Christian place of worship which can, depending on the case, constitute a building…). It was at this time that the woodwork of Paul Jude was sculpted from 1521 in the parliament hall. The palace then stopped at the left door after the Gothic chapel and adjoined a prison from which the defendants were taken out for trial. The latter could pity passers-by through air vents and ask them for alms.

The palace was enlarged for the first time in 1539 under the reign of François I^erthen one second (Second is the feminine of the adjective second, which comes immediately after the first or which…) times in 1562 during the reign of Charles IX. This part on the right looking at the facade is built in limestone (The limestones are sedimentary rocks, third most abundant after the…) bluish gray of Fontanil. L’architect (The architect is the building professional whose function is to design and direct…) and magistrate Pierre Bucher contributes in particular.

The interior decoration of the palace continued during the XVI^e century and even the XVII^e century century (A century is now a period of a hundred years. The word comes from the Latin saeculum, i, which…), in particular by sumptuous carved wooden cupboards. The interior decor matches the flamboyant style of the facades. Under Louis XIV, two or three beautiful ceilings will be added to the decoration.

Another gem, the living room blue (Blue (from Old High German “blao” = brilliant) is one of the three colours…), so named because of its tapestries. It was here that the Day of the Tiles was launched on June 7, 1788, the first event of the Dauphiné revolution, in reaction to the king’s decision to reform the Parliament.

In 1890, it was decided to triple the surface (A surface generally refers to the superficial layer of an object. The term a…) of the palace, the architects Daumas and Riondel then built in place of the prison and on the platform (Le Quai is a cultural space of the city of Angers in the department of Maine-et-Loire in…) de l’Isère, a building well connected to the old one and which does not shock. The stone is a limestone from l’Échaillon, from color (Color is the eye’s subjective perception of one or more wave frequencies…) light ochre. This extension will be inaugurated on August 4, 1897 by President Félix Faure, at the same time (Time is a concept developed by human beings to apprehend the…) as the Fountain of the Three Orders in Place Notre-Dame.

A remarkable trial

The Nobilibus affair was remarkable for its duration. A native Franciscan monk italian (Italian is the name commonly used for the rope used to maneuver a furler….) accused of witchcraft in 1604 for resorting to the occult and astrology.

Subjected to 230 interrogation sessions, detained for more than two years in the concierge (The Conciergerie is the main vestige of the former Palais de la Cité which was the…) of the palace, the unfortunate man was convinced that he had wanted to bewitch the King of France, Henri IV, to whom he had introduced himself as healer (A healer is a person, generally without a diploma…). The court rendered its sentence on August 14, 1606. The presumed sorcerer was condemned to hang at Place du Breuil (now Place Grenette) and his body was set on the flames.