In Grenoble’s museum is a room devoted to portraits of the good and great of Dauphiny. There are a dozen busts in marble of as many Dauphins, a portrait of Marie Vignon, the wife of Lesdiguières, and a crayon sketch of Bayard, which is the earliest portrait of the “Chevalier” extant. In the Église Saint Andre is the tomb of Bayard. The funeral monument surmounting it was erected only in the seventeenth century. The official chapel of the Dauphins has a great rectangular clocher remaining to suggest its former proportions. This fine tower is surmounted by an octagonal upper story and is flanked at each corner with a clocheton rising hardily into the rarefied atmosphere. The grim tower braves the tempests of winter to-day as it has since 1230.
Grenoble’s Hôtel des Trois Dauphins is an historic monument as replete with interest as many of more splendour. It was here that Napoleon lodged, with General Bertrand, on the night when he passed through the city on that eventful return from Elba when he sought to kindle the European war-flame anew.
Grenoble’s sole vestige of ancient castle or chateau architecture, aside from the temporary royal abode of the French kings and the Dauphins, is a round tower—La Grosse Tour Ronde—now built into the Hôtel de Ville, the only existing relic of a still earlier Palais des Dauphins which in its time stood upon the site of the ancient Roman remains of a structure built in the days of Diocletian.
Grenoble’s citadel possesses to-day only a square tower with machicoulis to give it the distinction of a militant spirit. It was built in 1409, but to-day has been reduced to a mere barrack’s accessory of not the slightest military strength, a “colombier militaire,” the authorities themselves cynically call it.
Vauban’s ancient ramparts have now been turned into a series of those tree-planted promenades so common in France, but the militant aspect of Grenoble is not allowed to be lost sight of, as a mere glance of the eye upward to the hillsides and mountain crests roundabout plainly indicates.
Grenoble, with its fort-crowned hill of “La Bastille,” has been called the Ehrenbreitstein of the Isère, a river which has played a momentous part in the history of Savoy and Dauphiny, but which is little known or recognized by those who follow the main lines of French travel.
Mont Rachet forms the underpinning of “La Bastille” and gives a foothold to an old feudal fortress now built around by a more modern work. Below is the juncture of the Isère and the Drac, and the great plain in the midst of which rests the proud old capital of the Dauphins. The site is truly remarkable and the strategic importance of the fortress was well enough made use of in mediæval times as a feudal stronghold. What its value for military purposes may actually be to-day is another story. The walls of the fortress certainly look grim enough, but it is probable that even the puniest of Alpine mountain batteries could reduce it in short order.
