La Roche-Guyon

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Coordinates: 49°04′56″N 1°37′49″E / 49.0822, 1.6303

Administration
Commune of La Roche-Guyon

La Roche-Guyan, the castle ans the keep
Location

Country	France
Region	Île-de-France
Department	Val-d'Oise
Arrondissement	Pontoise
Canton	Magny-en-Vexin
Intercommunality	CC du Vexin Val de Seine
Mayor	Alain Quenneville (2001-2008)
Statistics
Elevation	13–143 m
Land area^¹	4.61 km²
Population^² (1999)	550
- Density	119/km²
Miscellaneous
INSEE/Postal code	95523/ 95780
¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.
² Population sans doubles comptes: residents of multiple communes (e.g. students and military personnel) only counted once.

La Roche-Guyon is a commune of the Val-d'Oise département in France. The commune grew around the Château de La Roche-Guyon, upon which historically it depended for its existence. The commune's population in 1999 was 550.

1 Demographics
2 Château de La Roche-Guyon
3 See also
4 Notes
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Demographics

At the 1999 census, the population was 550.

The estimate for 2007 was 464.

[edit] Château de La Roche-Guyon

Château de La Roche-Guyon, with the donjon (keep) on the hill behind

The present Château de La Roche-Guyon^[1] was built in the twelfth century, controlling a river crossing of the Seine, itself one of the routes to and from Normandy;^[2] The Abbé Suger described its grim aspect: "At the summit of a steep promontory, dominating the bank of the great river Seine, rises a frightful castle without title to nobility, called La Roche. Invisible on the surface, it is hollowed out of a high cliff. The able hand of the builder has established in the mountainside, digging into the rock, an ample dwelling provided with a few miserable openings".^[3]In the mid thirteenth century, a fortified manor house was added below. Guy de La Roche fell at the battle of Agincourt, and his widow was ousted from the Roche, after six months of siege, in 1419; she preferred to depart rather than accept Henry Plantagenet as her overlord. It came to the Liancourt family with the marriage of Roger de Plessis-Liancourt to the heiress Marie de La Roche; he was a childhood companion of Louis XIII, first gentleman of the Chambre du Roi and made a duke in 1643. He and his wife made great changes to the château-bas, opening windows in its structure and laying out the terrace to the east, partly cut into the mountain's steep slope.

The domain of La Roche-Guyon came to the La Rochefoucauld family in 1669, with the marriage of Jeann-Charlotte de Plessis-Liancourt with François VII de La Rochefoucauld. The Château retained its medieval aspect of a fortress, with its moat and towers and cramped, dark living apartments. The Château was largely extended in the 18th century.

When Turgot, the minister of Louis XVI, failed in his schemes for fundamental reforms in 1776, he retired to the Château briefly, as the guest of Louise Elisabeth Nicole de La Rochefoucauld, duchesse d'Enville.

The castle was used as a setting for the medieval segment of a famous Franco-Belgian graphic novel on time travel: Le Piège diabolique (The Diabolical Trap) of the Blake and Mortimer series by Edgar Pierre Jacobs. German Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel (1891-1944) defended Normandy against the Allies in World War II from a bunker located here, the castle also was Rommel's headquarters.

La Roche-Guyon was the birthplace of François Alexandre Frédéric, duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (1747-1827).

Restorations and archaeological surveys undertaken after 1990 by the Conservatoire régional des Monuments historiques revealed new additions to the documentary history of La Roche-Guyon, undertaken in the nineteenth century by Hippolyte Alexandre and Emile Rousse

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

^ Its early seigneurs, vassals of the comtes de Meulan, traditionally bore the name Guy; La Roche-Guyon signifies the "Rock of Guy"
^ A ninth-century document leads historians to believe that the site was already fortified as part of the defenses against Viking marauders who used the Seine as a pathway upriver to Paris (Le Ménestrel du Vexin).
^ Suger, Vie de Louis VI, "Au sommet d'un promontoire abrupt, dominant la rive du grand fleuve de Seine, se dresse un château affreux et sans noblesse appelé La Roche. Invisible à sa surface, il se trouve creusé dans une haute roche. L'habile main du constructeur a ménagé sur le penchant de la montagne, en taillant dans la roche, une ample demeure pourvue d'ouvertures rares et misérables."