Royal Fortress

Royal Fortress

The royal fortress of Chinon is not one castle but three, set end to end on a spur above the Vienne: Fort Saint-Georges to the east, the Château du Milieu, and Fort du Coudray to the west. Henry II Plantagenet died there in 1189; it was there that Joan of Arc came to recognise Charles VII in 1429. The site now belongs to the Indre-et-Loire department.

Illumination of the curtain walls, ramparts and towers that overlook the Vienne and the lower town. The project is composed at the scale of the landscape: the line of the ramparts, the hillside and the quayside frontages are ranked so that they read as one from the far bank. Carried out for the Indre-et-Loire Departmental Council and SIEIL 37.

At that distance — the width of the river — detail no longer carries. What is seen is a line, its length, and what holds it up. The curtain walls therefore take a continuous value that carries the whole front without a break, the towers are pitched one step above to punctuate the run, and the hillside is left in shadow so that the fortress appears carried by the rock rather than set upon it. The quayside frontages, warmer and lower, form the foreground and give the scale.