Ripaille Castle, Thonon-les-Bains, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France
The castle of Ripaille is a former mansion of the late xiii th century or the beginning of the xiv th century that stands in the town of Thonon-les-Bains a French commune in the department of Haute-Savoie in the region Auvergne- Rhône-Alpes. By its grandeur, its charm, its memories, Chateau & Estate of Ripaille is one of the most beautiful sites in the region. Extending over 120 hectares on the shores of Lake Geneva, Ripaille is not only worthy of its architecture and its history, linked to the most brilliant periods of the Savoy past, but also by its nature – in particular its forests – and its wine.
Already inhabited in the Bronze Age, Ripaille was a prosperous villa in Gallo-Roman times, as evidenced by important ruins. In the Middle Ages, one of the main residences of the counts and dukes of Savoy, in the 17th and 18th centuries a Carthusian convent, protected from the “century” by the high wall which still surrounds it today, in 1900 property of a a great industrialist-esthete, Ripaille has always been a place where residents and visitors come to “recharge their batteries” in its calm and beauty and to eat from the bustle and hassle of the world.
The castle has been registered as a historical monument since the July 11, 1942. The entrance pavilion, the Bonne de Bourbon tower, the Carthusian pavilion and cell, the buildings known as the Priory and Saint-Michel, the floor of the main courtyard, the rural buildings of the former Carthusian monastery (mill, fenière, laundry room, pigsty, farm, barn, forge, kennel), the Tour du Noyer and the bastion of the surrounding wall have been listed as historical monuments since the November 19, 1991.
Today Ripaille is largely a private estate belonging to the Necker-Engel family, descendant of Louis XVI’s Minister of Finance. Each year up to 50,000 people enter the site, for guided tours, seminars, weddings, exhibitions and other events, walks in the woods, swimming on its banks, buying wine.
Features
The castle stands in the center of a large estate that was once a hunting reserve. The building has a rectangular base with some secondary structures leaning against it and a moat, now dried up, which runs around the perimeter. Its main façade is characterized by four of the six original cylindrical towers, with conical roofs and hanging arches.
Completely rebuilt in Renaissance style on the outside, the interior features numerous boardrooms furnished with boiseries and some rooms in Art Nouveau style. The structure can be visited and includes a two-storey path through the main rooms, exhibition spaces with reproductions of Savoy documents, the main apartment, the kitchens, the large cellar, the ancient chapel and a projection room where you can watch a film that tells the long history of the castle.
In the immediate vicinity is the Arboretum of about 22 hectares, many of which are planted with vines, which allows the production of an appreciated white wine: Ripaille. Not far away is also the copious forest of 53 hectares which was a hunting reserve of the Savoy and which is now partly owned by the municipality of Thonon-les-Bains.
History
The castle of Feast is often confused with the castle of Thonon, destroyed in the xvii th century, and was 1411 at the end of the xv th century one of the main residences of the House of Savoy. This castle occupied approximately the space between the Castle of Sonnaz (1666) and the Saint-Bon (the xi th century).
The Ripaille castle, built from the middle of the xiv th century, was originally a manor house, wooden pavilion on a stone base, in the middle of a game reserve.
Amédée V of Savoy would have stayed there in 1293 after the conclusion of the Treaty of Saint-Jean-de-Moirans.
Bonne de Bourbon had it enlarged between 1371 and 1388 and transformed it into a pleasure house. His son Amédée VII died there in 1391. Constantly altered and enlarged, in particular by the addition in 1410 by Amédée VIII of the priory of the Augustinians of Ripaille, order to which he cedes his house and his manor with all its dependencies. In 1417 3 Pope Martin V consecrates the convent under the name of Notre-Dame and Saint-Maurice, it is endowed with an income of one thousand gold florins for the maintenance of a prior and fourteen religious. In 1434 Amédée VIII retired there with six of his companions, including Louis de Chevelu, who founded the Order of Saint-Maurice there.
PRINCIAL AND CHARTREUSE RESIDENCE
Inhabited since Antiquity, Ripaille was, from the 13th century a hunting ground for the Counts of Savoy before becoming, from the 14th century, one of their favorite residence. Chateau & Estate of RipailleIn 1434, Amédée VIII, first Duke of Savoy and future Pope, built the castle, which then had 7 towers, of which only 4 remain today. Although designed as a religious retreat for great lords, Ripaille was at the center of the very brilliant civilization known to Savoy at that time, then an important European state. In particular, famous writers, musicians and miniaturists met there princes, kings and even an emperor, dining with the succulent recipes of Maître Chiquart, cook of Amédée VIII, and already drinking Ripaille wine.
The invasion of Chablais by the Bernese in 1536 marked the end of the Augustinian monastery. Emmanuel Philibert, raised the castle in 1579 and made it a stronghold, work to be completed by Charles Emmanuel. In 1589 the Geneva invasion forced the Ripaille garrison to surrender. The victors raze the enclosure and destroy a good number of buildings. They will be driven out in 1590 by the Savoyard troops.
Charles Emmanuel in 1624 constituted the charterhouse of Ripaille there by uniting it with the convent of Vallon. During the Revolution the Carthusians had to abandon the monastery in 1793, they then retired to Switzerland. The buildings are sold in 1795 as national property to Mr. Amand who will cede them to Mr. Tillot who himself sells them in 1809 to General Count Pierre Louis Dupas.
After the wars of the Reformation, and through the intervention of Saint François de Sales, Ripaille was, in the 17th and 18th centuries, a charterhouse protected from the “world” by its large walls. During the French Revolution, Ripaille became very national before being sold to General Dupas, from Evian, who rested there from the Napoleonic wars, offering Ripaille wine to his former comrades in arms…
A “total work of art” in the Belle Époque
Purchased at the end of the xix th century by Frederick Engel-Gros, of Mulhouse, owner of textile factories DMC, it was remodeled, the exterior style Renaissance, the interior style Art Nouveau. His son André Engel created the arboretum on the estate, planted in 1930, it was damaged by the storm of 1999.
At the end of the 19th century, the site of Ripaille was falling into ruin. It was then that the Alsatian Frédéric Engel-Gros, owner of the DMC spinning mills and great art lover, fell in love with the site and bought it. Having called on two brilliant young architects, one of whom had worked at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1889, he completely restored the estate, its buildings and its park, a gigantic undertaking. The only exception: he demolished an 18th century church – which had never been completed – because it hid three towers out of the four of the castle as well as the view of the Dent d’Oche, the “Matterhorn of Chablais”. He put instead a French garden, which today is the admiration of all.
Engel-Gros produced a real “total work of art” in the Wagnerian sense, where everything harmonized, the buildings, the architecture and interior decoration, the gardens, the vineyard, the forests. He was part of a European avant-garde movement, the “Burgenrenaissance” or renaissance of fortified castles, which distanced itself from the historicism of a Viollet-le-Duc and which did not hesitate – when old building was in ruins – to mix modern style with old style. This is how in Ripaille wherever the buildings were in good condition, as for example in what is now called the Charterhouse, Engel-Gros had these buildings restored identically. On the other hand, where the buildings were in ruins, which was the case in particular with the castle,
The Château de Ripaille thus became a veritable showcase for the best creations of this Art Nouveau style, which was called Arts and Crafts in Great Britain and Jugendstil in Germany. This appears not only in the details of the architecture inside the castle, for example in the woodwork or the ceiling paintings, but also in all the movable objects that we have found and which are signed by the greatest names of the time, including curtains and furniture by William Morris, the great promoter of the English Arts and Crafts style and the famous fountain on the first floor of the castle, made by Max Laeuger, considered a “German Gallé”.
The Ripaille Foundation has set itself the objectives in the years to come to restore the atmosphere of the castle in 1900. To date two rooms, the winter dining room and the old kitchen have been renovated by the Ripaille Foundation.
Contemporary
The descendants, the Necker -Engels, from the family of Louis XVI’s Minister of Finance, still own a large part of Ripaille. In 1976 Madame Harold Necker, with the help of the public authorities, created the Ripaille Foundation to conserve and enhance this heritage. Chateau & Estate of RipailleThe castle with four towers, as well as 3 buildings and 4 hectares of land, were donated in 1976 by Madame Elisabeth Necker-Engel to the Ripaille Foundation, which aims to conserve this monument, enhance it and make it a place of promotion of a better relationship between man and his natural environment.
Around the castle, there is an important wine – growing estate of 22 hectares, producing a very appreciated white wine, Le Ripaille, as well as a forest of 53 hectares maintained jointly with the town of Thonon-les-Bains which owns part of it.
Since 1997, on the part of the site which belongs to the municipality of Thonon, a Memorial of the Righteous has been erected, which is a tribute to those who made it possible, during the Second World War, to save numerous human lives from the genocide, a tribute to the non-Jews who helped Jews victims of the terrible persecutions of that time. The monument to the Righteous among the Nations of France was inaugurated in the clearing of Ripaille by the President of the Republic, Jacques Chirac, on November 2, 1997. Located between the forest and the arboretum, the Memorial of the Righteous commemorates the courage of 2740 French who saved Jews from certain death during World War II and invites the duty to remember.
According to legend, the expression feasting, would find its origin here: the Dukes of Savoy, once owners of what was a large hunting estate, used to feast there. The anecdote is too good: the expression “to feast” is attested in the texts several decades before the construction of the first pavilion. The name of Ripaille also derives from the term “rispe”, broussailles or even “moors”. The link with the castle comes from the place itself which, before construction, was a moor covered with brush.
The castle has hosted on several occasions the semi-professional theater troupe based in Thonon-les-Bains “la Compagnie du Graal”. She plays sound and light adaptations of Romeo and Juliet in 2006, the Three Musketeers in 2007 and 2015, the original creation Hyperion in 2012 and the touring show the Magic Flute in 2014.
Nowaday
Today Ripaille, widely open to the public, is the largest natural site on the shores of Lake Geneva. Château & Domaine de Ripaille – TodayIt is remarkable for its large forest, where oak predominates, for its arboretum, for its meadows and vines, for its birdlife, in particular, and for a large area of gardens. Three entities own and manage it, in good agreement: to the west, the Ripaille Foundation owns the Château and 4 hectares of land, to the east the Town of Thonon owns woodland and meadows. with a capacity of about 30 hectares and, between two the Necker-Engel family, descendant of Frédéric Engel-Gros, owns the rest of the woods, meadows and gardens, as well as the famous vineyard and the buildings of the old Chartreuse by Ripaille.
Ripaille is now widely open to the public – young and old – for tours of its historic buildings, seminars, weddings and other receptions, for exhibitions and other cultural events, for its renowned Book Fair, for swimming on its banks, for walks in the woods and a visit to the Memorial of the Just. Ripaille therefore offers an interesting example of private-public partnership, which allows the site to keep its character as a living place and its soul.
Gudie Tour
The visit of the site of Ripaille immerses the visitor in a historical fresco, between the 14th century and 1900: The history of the counts and of the first Duke of Savoy, Amédée VIII the Pacific who built the castle in 1434. The history of the religious at the castle which was a Charterhouse from 1622. The story of Frédéric Engel-Gros, an industrial esthete who bought the castle in 1900, and entrusted great European architects, artists and craftsmen with this formidable restoration, in the Belle style Time.
The visit of the castle includes: The “Salle des Amédée” with original and unpublished objects from the 14th and 15th centuries; The 1900 Parcours and the reconstruction of an old kitchen and a dining room illustrating the style of life in the Belle Epoque; The film Ripaille over time; The large terrace and the medieval moats; The exhibition rooms; The tea room and the shop.
Ripaille Wine
The Château de Ripaille is surrounded by 22 ha of vines which have a privileged location. The terroir made up of glacial formations giving a gravelly and permeable soil benefits from a climate whose extremes are softened by the immediate vicinity of Lake Geneva. The culture of the vine is very old there, undoubtedly of Gallo-Roman origin. In the Middle Ages the domain belonged to the sovereign house of Savoy, but the vine and the wine were the business of monks, canons of Saint-Augustin first, then Carthusian monks. The long tradition in the quality policy that these monks had traced in the vinification of the Chasselas plant has been continued until today by the Necker-Engel family, owner of the estate since 1892, and in particular by Mrs Paule Necker., oenologist, who has managed the operation since 1996. Ripaille white wine is now sold throughout France and exported to several overseas countries.