Château de Pierre Scize
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The Château de Pierre Scize or Château de Pierre Encise is a now-demolished fortress in Lyon.
It was built on a strategic location in the Middle Ages, facing the Saône at the western entrance to the city, the border between the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of France. Home to the archbishop of Lyon and used as a state prison by Louis XI, it was finally demolished in 1793 after the French Revolution.
The rocky outcrop on which it was built was originally named "Petra incisa", meaning "split stone" or "cut stone", possibly recalling Agrippa's major works to build a Roman road through it.[1] According to Clerjon (1830), the spur of Pierre Scise used to reach as far as the middle of the Saône.[1]
The Pierre Scisse spur is part of the crystalline base layer on the edge of the Massif central. On the heights overlooking the château, this granite is covered by the sedimentary massif of Les Monts d’Or, with an average altitude of 300 metres, inclined towards the east and shaped into a 'cuesta' which overlooks the Saône River valley by a nearly continuous steep slope from Fourvière to Millery; this slope corresponds to an exhumed fault line scarp.
The crystalline lowest level is found on the left bank of the Saône at the Pierre-Scize gorge and in the riverbed of the Saône, upstream at Île Barbe.[2] That gorge begins at the same altitude as the church of Saint-Pierre-aux-Liens de Vaise (150 metres downstream of the pont Clémenceau in Lyon[3][4] and ends on the same alignment as the Église Saint-Paul (at the same altitude as the Saint-Vincent footbridge[5]).
Further downstream, at the exit to the Pierre Scise gorge, was an outcrop of the Pierre Scise spur, also in the Saône riverbed. It was 85 metres wide by 115 metres long, emerging at around 3 metres above the waterline at average water levels. The central piers of the pont du Change were built against it. Explosives were used to destroy it around 1847.[6]
Location
Architecture
History
Construction
Hundred Years War
17th and 18th centuries
Under Richelieu Louis XIII made it a royal residence.[7] At the end of the 18th century it was commanded by M. André de Bory and from 1780 by Claude Espérance de Regnauld-Alleman