Between the Taulignan family in the Middle Ages who gave Joan of Arc his squire, or perhaps the Lord of UCEL who followed Montlaur and the Austrian high nobility who sold the house to merchants in 1869, This house was the home of an influential bourgeois family to whom we owe most of the current buildings and in particular the exceptional suspended staircase of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that can be visited. Shared property then fell into misery. It was in 1970 that a shipwright, Maurice Prinsard, fell in love with the staircase, acquired the essential part of this building and engaged its restoration. Advised by the abbot Charray and under the control of historical monuments, he obtained in 1978 the national price "Masterpiece in danger".

The frames

After crossing the old entrance door of the eighteenth, 8 rue Jourdan, the visit of the house today allows to admire the staircase and understand what makes a good staircase, but also to observe archaeological traces highlighting how an old house resists and passes through the outrages of time... One will notice the old kitchen transformed, one would think it ransacked to allow the construction of the staircase. We can also observe the remains of the old castle: walled Romanesque openings, a Gothic element, perhaps an old open hall later transformed into a closed warehouse. In the Théâtre d'agriculture et le mesnage des champs d'Olivier de Serres, we will read the use of rainwater cisterns…

Themes

What «citizens» lived in this house? We will recall the "castles of town" of Aubenas, castles of Géorand, Tauligan and Mongros, lords of the plateaux of Vivarais, as opposed to the "Château-neuf" of the suzeraine family of Montlaur. Then it will be necessary to evoke the "martyrs of Aubenas", dead to remain faithful to their conscience, Catholic martyrs of the wars of religion in France who had been welcomed in this house from November 1592 to February 1593. The originality of this recognition will be highlighted. The revolt of Roure passed by there in 1670: in the house, there will be many deaths and important damage. It is undoubtedly this painful event that later forced the transfer of the kitchen elsewhere and the construction of a new staircase... This work was entrusted to Louis Laidier by François-Louis Batthélémy father, lawyer. In 1789, François-Louis Barthélémy son, owner, was the first consul of Aubenas, shortly before, he had to fight with Cerice de Vogüé – who is nevertheless close to the ideas of the Enlightenment – to enforce the freedoms of the city.
By association of ideas, we will overflow on the bourgeoisies of Aubenas: they manage the city since 1250, become dress from the 16th to the 18th, industry from the 18th to the 19th. On the sidelines, the exhibition on a child of this bourgeoisie, "Un albenassien dans l'histoire du Japon", will be offered as a free visit. We will discover how Léonce Verny was the pioneer of modern Japan by making one of the first great transfers of technology in history, a transfer that had a great influence on the social organization of the Land of the Rising Sun. Finally, one will be surprised to see this house fall into the properties of the high Austrian nobility who separated from it at low prices… The house then went to its ruin and was saved in the 70s by a shipwright, Maurice Prinsard, who obtained the price "Masterpiece in danger". Today, Sabine and Alain Chevalier took over in 2011. They continue the restoration, maintain the buildings and research the history. They offer a bed and breakfast service focused on discovering the history and heritage of Aubenas. Isn’t being a citizen living in the city?