Richelieu, city of the cardinal

Richelieu is a new town built between 1631 and 1642 and located in the department of Indre-et-Loire at 20 min from Chinon. It carries the imprint of its founder and patron, Cardinal de Richelieu, and is a remarkable testimony to 17th century town planning.

In 1631, King Louis XIII, wanted to thank his minister Cardinal de Richelieu for his eminent services. He did him the favor of erecting “a walled village of walls and ditches and to build a hall” and to establish four annual fairs and two markets a week.

Richelieu asked Jacques Lemercier, an architect of the king, author of the Sorbonne and Palais-Cardinal (now Palais-Royal), to take care of building, on the site of the family property, a vast castle, a reflection of its size and a new town nearby for his court. Nearly 2,000 people worked on the site, almost completed byt the time the Cardinal died , in 1642.

This innovative project linking the construction of a castle and a city in the same program, foreshadows the Versailles construction site. Richelieu Park, with an area of ​​475 ha, surrounded by walls, sheltered the vast area of ​​the Cardinal which remains today some vestiges: one of the domes of the forecourt, the orangery, the cellars and all the channel layout.

After the Revolution and his exile to St. Petersburg, the Cardinal’s great-grand-nephew was forced to separate from this vast ensemble, restored to the heirs of Richelieu. The estate is sold and bought in 1805 by a merchant who sells it stone by stone.

The last Duke of Richelieu, died without descendants, bequeaths the park to the University of Paris in 1930, in memory of the Cardinal, headmaster and great restorer of the Sorbonne.

Distance 32 km