Tourelle du Palais de Justice GRENOBLE
B. McM. ’08.
Saint Laurent, the Grenoble suburb, not the mountain town hidden away in the fastness of the mountain massif of Chartreuse, occupies the site of an ancient Gaulish foundation called Cularo. Its name was later changed to Gratianopolis, out of compliment to the Emperor Gratian, which in time evolved itself into Grenoble, the capital of “the good province of our most loyal Dauphin.”
Grenoble’s chief architectural treasure is its present Palais de Justice, the ancient buildings of the old Parliament of Dauphiny and its Cour des Comptes. Virtually it is a chateau of state and is, moreover, the most important monument of the French Renaissance existing in the Rhône valley. Begun under Louis XI, it was terminated under François Premier, when, following upon the Italian wars, it was a place of sojourn for the kings of France.
On entering the portal at the right one comes directly to the Chambre du Tribunal of to-day, its walls panelled with a wonderful series of wood-carvings coming from the ancient Cour des Comptes, the work of a German sculptor, Paul Jude, in 1520.
The portal to the left leads to the Cour d’Appel—the Chambres des Audiences Solennelles—whose ceiling was designed in 1660 by Jean Lepautre, a great decorative artist of the court of Louis XIV, and carved by one Guillebaud, a native of Grenoble. The ancient chapel, or such of it as remains, where the parliament heard mass, is reached through this room. The ancient Chambre des Comptes dates from the reign of Charles VIII.
The Grande Salle on the upper floor is one of the notable works of its epoch with respect to its decorations, though the noble glass of its numerous windows was destroyed long years ago, leaving behind only a record of its magnificently designed armoiries and inscriptions. The chief, out-of-the-ordinary, decorations still to be observed are the sculptured fronts of thirty-eight cupboard doors which enclose the provincial archives. From an artistic, no less than a utilitarian, point of view, they are certainly to be admired, even preferred, before the “elastic” book cases of to-day.
Much of the old Palais des Dauphins’ former magnificent attributes in the shape of decorative details remain to charm the eye and senses to-day, but of the extensive range of apartments of former times only a bare three or four suggest by their groinings, carvings and chimney-pieces the splendour with which the elder sons of the kings of France were wont to surround themselves.
A remarkably successful work of restoration of the façade was accomplished within a dozen years on the model of the best of Renaissance details in other parts of the edifice, until to-day the whole presents a most effective ensemble.