French abandoned chateau in Alsace
| Château Burrus | |
|---|---|
 The front elevation | |
  Location within FranceShow map of France Château Burrus (Grand Est)Show map of Grand Est Château Burrus (Alsace)Show map of Alsace | |
| General information | |
| Status | Abandoned |
| Address | 74, Rue Maurice Burrus |
| Town or city | Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines |
| Country | France |
| Coordinates | 48°15′46″N 7°13′26″E / 48.2629°N 7.2240°E / 48.2629; 7.2240 |
| Completed | 1900 |
| Owner | Maurice Burrus |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 3 |
| Lifts/elevators | 1 |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect(s) | Jules Berninger, Gustave Krafft |
| Monument historique | |
| Designated | 21 January 1993 |
| Reference no. | IA68007218 |
Château Burrus is a château in Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines, in the department of Haut-Rhin, Alsace, France. It was built in 1900 and has been listed as a historical monument since 1993.
History
It was the family home of Maurice Burrus, a tobacco manufacturer and famous boss, built in 1900. During the Second World War, the chateau was requisitioned and transformed into a training centre for SS officers. It is in neo-baroque style. Maurice Burrus belonged to one of the largest families of tobacco manufacturers. The factory was closed in 1947, and after Maurice's death in 1959, the building was sold to a religious congregation and then resold to private individuals. Today, the building has been abandoned and is often visited by urban explorers. In 2022 a family bought the château and started renovating it.
Architecture
The chateau is in neo-baroque style like Opéra Garnier (1875) or Saint-Maurice church in Freyming-Merlebach (1913). The architects are two Alsatians who studied in Stuttgart and at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Jules Berninger and his brother-in-law Gustave Krafft.
The ground floor consists of eight rooms and a large hall.
The hall features Ionic and Corinthian-style columns and is adorned with fake yellow marble. It is in the centre of the chateau and opens onto all the rooms and all the floors.
The green room is adorned with mirror holders which considerably enlarge the room. It is adorned with a ceiling painted with a slightly cloudy sky.
The red room is the most opulent, with its two fake red marble columns, its copper gilding which magnifies all the ceiling details, doors and walls covered in some places with red satin silk tapestries.
The wooden room is, as its name suggests, all in wood from floor to ceiling and half of the wall covered with embossed cardboard tapestries. Renaissance-style furniture proudly stands in the room.
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The green room
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The green room
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The doors of the red room
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Columns in the red room
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The wooden room
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The hall and its fake yellow marble
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The stairs and its large window
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View of the glass roof from the first floor
References
- Base Mérimée: IA68007218, Ministère français de la Culture. (in French) Maison : Château Burrus
- "Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines. Intervention au Château Burrus". www.dna.fr (in French). Retrieved 2021-09-21.
- Malal, Sylvie (19 July 2022). "Haut-Rhin : la renaissance du château Burrus, à Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines, laissé à l'abandon depuis une trentaine d'années". France Info. Retrieved 20 July 2022.
- ^ These names are not official; they are just names the urban explorers give.
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