A little history of Vauluisant townhouse

This nice mansion dates back to 1564. In fact, it was Vauluisant monks' ancient house, Cistercian monks. Because in the Middle Age, abbeys owned houses in biggest French cities, where monks took shelter in case of war. Well, between the 12th and the 15th century, monks owned this mansion.

Then in 1481, they gave a small plot of land from their house to Thibault Berthier, a merchant. Nicolas Hennequin then Claude Molé owned the mansion in the beginning of the 16th century. But a terrible fire destroyed everything in the city of Troyes, in 1524! The fire lasted for 28 hours...

The mansion was destroyed, too, of course. The owners sold a plot of land in order to rebuilt the church of St-Pantaléon (right in front of the house). In 1564, Antoine Hennequin owned it and built a main building and two turrets.

Fell then to Mesrigny family in 1623, they raised a Classical building, T-shaped, and a huge portal. So, we have here two buildings, the first one raised in the 16th century by Guillaume Hennequin (Renaissance style), the second one built by Jean de Mesrigny between 1686 and 1700...

Anyway, the Mesrigny family sold the mansion in 1826; the city of Troyes owned it in 1932 and nowadays, it houses a nice Historical and Fine Arts museum.