The Palais Granvelle actually serves to-day the purpose of headquarters of Besançon’s Société Savante.
Nicolas Perrenot, Seigneur de Granvelle, its builder (1533-1540), was the chancellor of Charles Quint, and brother of the Cardinal de Granvelle, minister of Charles Quint and Philippe II. He was descended from a noble Burgundian family, not from a blacksmith as has faultily been given by more than one historian.
Charles Quint, in writing to his son, after the death of his chancellor—“in his palace at Besançon,” said: “My son, I am extremely touched by the death of Granvelle. In him you and I have lost a firm staff upon which to lean.”
The centre of the admirable town house of the sixteenth century is occupied by a vast courtyard surrounded by a series of Doric columns in marble, supporting a range of low arcades. The principal façade is built of “marbre du pays,” which is not marble or anything like it, but a very suitable stone for building nevertheless. It might be called “near-marble” by an enterprising modern contractor, and a fortune made off it by skilful advertising. It is better, at any rate, than armoured cement.
The structure rises but two stories above the rez-de-chaussée, but is topped off with an “attique” (a word we all recognize even though it be French) and three great stone lucarnes, ornamented with light open-work consoles à jour.
Each story is decorated at equal intervals by a superimposed series of columns. The first is Doric, the second Ionic and the third Corinthian, and each divides its particular story into five travées.
The entrance portal is particularly to be remarked for its elegance. It is flanked on either side by a Corinthian column and is surmounted by a pair of angel heads in bronze.
Drawing closer and closer to the frontier, the face of everything growing more and more warlike the while, one comes to Montbéliard, practically a militant outpost of modern France, though actually its importance in this respect is overshadowed by neighbouring Belfort. At Belfort Bartholdi’s famous lion—a better stone lion by the way than Thorwaldsen’s at Luzerne—crouches in his carven cradle in the hillside ready to spring at the first rumours of war. If France is ever invaded again it will not be by way of the gateway which is defended by Belfort and Montbéliard, that is certain!
