Palais des comtes du Maine

About

The palace of the Counts of Maine still named Royal Palace Plantagenet is located in Le Mans in the heart of the city Plantagenet in the department of Sarthe in France. Initially the seat of the Comtal power of Maine, of which Le Mans is the historic capital, it is today the Mans Town Hall. The palace appears for the first time in sources written at the end of the 11th century, it is then mainly constituted by a large room of appartment, supplemented during the Middle Ages by the addition of princely apartments and various other rooms.

The palace also has its own chapel, the collegiate Saint-Pierre-la-Court, which dates back to the ninth century and contained the relics of Scholastice, patron saint of Le Mans. The palace, occupied by the hereditary Counts of Maine, and later by the Plantagenets who inherited the county in the 12th century, was inhabited notably by Geoffroy Plantagenet, Henry II of England and his daughter-in-law, Queen Berengère of Navarre, widow of Richard Coeur de Lion. He was then abandoned when Maine was taken over by the Capetians.

The county is, however, given as an apanage to cadets of the royal family, who occupy the palace from time to time, mainly in the...