Chateau de Sade Provence Digital Photography holiday course

The Chateau of the Marquis de Sade

Donatien - Alphonse - François de Sade born in Paris was first introduced to the chateau at the age of twenty five, he set about making it a centre for high society to meet.

Festivals, balls and intimate 'play' in his newly installed theatre. Hot summer nights were to see seigneurs et belles dames, separate on the stone plateau where he had planted an aromatic garden, while peasants could only look up at a spectacle, in an inaccessible but illuminated fortress.

serie : Provence Mystèrieuse © A. J. Sq

But the seigneur of Lacoste was not a master comme les autres. He first took refuge here in 1771 after l'affaire d' Arcueil, when he tied a beggar naked to a divan whipping her until she bled. She did escape to tell the accusing tale. But far from sober reflection he was to multiply his excess of temperament especially in his personal theatre.

Made prisoner in Vincenennes, then the Bastille he eventually died in the asylum of Charenton in 1814, according to the notaire, 'of a sickness of the body and mind'. Meanwhile in 1792 with the courage of the revolution and revenge, eighty citizens sacked the chateau.

Once a bastion of protestant purity, the chateau came to be seen as a citadel of fear and horror. Not since Baron Maynier d'Oppède, an original sadist, gave all the women and girls of Lacoste to the audacity of his soldiers, had the village suffered so much.

In notable addition to the 120 days of Sodom, Philosophy in the Bedroom and Juliet, he wrote nearly one hundred books of lucid criticism against all the political, economic and moral institutions of France, at the opening moment of the Revolution.

The Roman Arena. Arles. ^{1st Century}

An arena of ritual death between animals and Gladiators, and for a while Christians. Games which might last for a week. Transformed into a Fort during the Middle Ages as a defence against saracen invasions , the Arena became a city in-itself with over two hundred houses, including two churches. Restored to its former self in 1830. Now a rendezvous for bull fighting.

O^{A n t i q u i t é} ^{V i r t u e} ^{Mi d d l e A g e s}

O^{A g e n d a} ^{F o r W h o m} ^{P r a c t i c a l} ^{M e} ^{H e r e} ^{P r o v e n c e} ^{L e a r n} ^{C o m m e n t}^{E n r o l m e n t}