Hôtel de Bourgtheroulde, Autograph Collection

Place de la Pucelle, the Maid's Square, takes its name from Joan of Arc, who was burned a few metres away in 1431. Seventy years later, in 1501, Guillaume Le Roux, lord of Bourgtheroulde and a member of the Exchequer of Normandy, began a mansion on the square that his son finished in the 1530s. The Hôtel de Bourgtheroulde, Autograph Collection, in Rouen, is that building, converted into a hotel in 2010 after five centuries as a private house, a bank and a ruin of the Second World War.

History

The Le Roux family built the mansion at the moment when the Flamboyant Gothic of Normandy met the Renaissance arriving from Italy, and the building shows both. The best-known element is the gallery on the courtyard, built by Guillaume's son after 1520 and carved with a frieze of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the summit meeting between François I and Henry VIII near Calais in June 1520, at which the Le Roux family had been present. The mansion was classified a monument historique in 1924. Rouen was heavily bombed in 1944 and the building lost its roofs and part of its structure; it was restored after the war and for decades housed the regional offices of the Crédit Industriel de Normandie bank. The bank left in the 2000s and a developer converted the mansion into a hotel, which opened in 2010 and later joined Marriott's Autograph Collection.

Architecture and design

The street façade on the square is Flamboyant Gothic, with an octagonal stair tower and a gate. Through it the courtyard opens, with the Renaissance gallery on the left: a loggia with arcades and, above the arches, the two friezes, one of the 1520 meeting and one of the Triumphs of Petrarch. The hotel conversion, led by the Lille architect Pierre-Louis Carlier, kept the historic ranges and inserted the spa and most of the rooms into a new wing behind them, with a glazed roof over part of the courtyard. Interiors use pale stone, oak and contemporary furniture; the old vaults are visible where they survive.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has 78 rooms and suites. Those in the historic ranges have beams, stone window surrounds and views of the courtyard or the square; those in the new wing are larger and quieter. Suites occupy the upper floors of the old house, one of them in the stair tower.

Dining

The restaurant occupies a vaulted room off the courtyard and serves Norman cooking with the produce of the Seine valley; the bar in the former banking hall is open to non-residents and has become a meeting place for the city. Breakfast is served under the glass roof.

Wellness

The spa, in the basement of the new wing, has an indoor pool, a hammam, a sauna and treatment rooms, which makes the hotel the only one in central Rouen with a swimming pool.

Weddings and events

The courtyard under the Renaissance gallery is the setting for wedding cocktails, with the dinner in the vaulted salons. Meeting rooms in the new wing take seminars; the hotel is used by companies of the Rouen region for board meetings because of the address. Capacities are modest, in keeping with a house of 78 rooms.

Location

The square is at the heart of the old town, two minutes from the Place du Vieux-Marché and the modern church of Joan of Arc, five from the cathedral painted by Monet and the Gros-Horloge. Rouen Rive-Droite station is 15 minutes on foot or a short taxi ride, with trains to Paris Saint-Lazare in about 80 minutes. There is no commercial airport in Rouen; Paris Charles de Gaulle is about 140 kilometres. This is the luxury hotel in Rouen that visitors to Normandy's capital choose when they want to sleep inside its history.