Palace of the Counts of Maine

En un regard

Le château en bref

At the summit of the Cité Plantagenêt, the old town of Le Mans, the Palace of the Counts of Maine now houses the town hall. It is attested from the late 11th century: its great hall appears in charters of 1090–1096, and Count Elias I rebuilt the neighbouring collegiate church of Saint-Pierre-la-Cour in 1093. In 1110, the marriage of Erembourg of Maine to Fulk V of Anjou brought the county into the orbit of the Plantagenets: Geoffrey V of Anjou stayed there, Henry II of England was born there, and Queen Berengaria of Navarre lived there until 1230. The great hall, about 713 square metres in area and twenty-three metres high, rested on two rows of wooden piers; a square tower contained the princely apartments, with twinned windows. Having become chiefly administrative from the 14th century onwards, the palace suffered a fire in 1720 and a storm in 1738; the roof frame of the great hall collapsed in 1757, and an L-shaped building replaced it in 1768. The town acquired the palace at the Revolution. The ruins of the Gros-Pilier keep have been listed since 1930, and the towers and curtain walls have been registered as historic monuments since 1945.