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Founded: 1130Category: Religious sites in Germany
Historical period: Hohenstaufen Dynasty (Germany)
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St. Peter's Abbey on the Madron was a Benedictine monastery in Flintsbach. The church, now a pilgrimage church known as the Peterskirchlein, still stands on the site.
The Madron is a mountain known also as the Petersberg. It was occupied in ancient times, showing traces of Bronze Age settlement.
A poorly documented monastic foundation dating from sometime in the 8th century and settled by monks from St. Peter's Abbey in Salzburg was destroyed by the Hungarian invasion of the early 10th century. A supposed resettlement in about 955 by refugee monks from Wessobrunn Abbey is equally poorly evidenced.
In 1130 however the monastery, dedicated to Saint Peter, was definitely (re)founded by Count Siboto of Falkenstein and resettled by monks from Weihenstephan Abbey in Freising. The Counts of Falkenstein-Neuburg were also the abbey's Vögte (lords protector) and endowed it with a number of estates. They gave the abbey to the Bishop of Freising in 1163, but retained the office of Vogt. The monastery was destroyed in 1296 during a dynastic conflict, and never rebuilt. The site became from the 14th century a prebend for a canon of Freising Cathedral, part of whose responsibilities was to oversee the long-established pilgrimage here. It was dissolved in the secularisation of 1803.
The area for which the place had pastoral responsibility was extremely small, but against expectation, the church survived and became shortly afterward the centre of a renewed interest in the tradition of the pilgrimage. The church is today a well-known landmark on its mountain.
References:The famous Italian Medici family have given two queens to France: Catherine, the spouse of Henry II, and Marie, widow of Henry IV, who built the current Luxembourg palace. Maria di Medici had never been happy at the Louvre, still semi-medieval, where the fickle king, did not hesitate to receive his mistresses. The death of Henry IV, assassinated in 1610, left the way open for Marie's project. When she became regent, she was able to give special attention to the construction of an imposing modern residence that would be reminiscent of the Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens in Florence, where she grew up. The development of the 25-hectare park, which was to serve as a jewel-case for the palace, began immediately.
The architect, Salomon de Brosse, began the work in 1615. Only 16 years later was the palace was completed. Palace of Luxembourg affords a transition between the Renaissance and the Classical period.
In 1750, the Director of the King's Buildings installed in the wing the first public art-gallery in France, in which French and foreign canvases of the royal collections are shown. The Count of Provence and future Louis XVIII, who was living in Petit Luxembourg, had this gallery closed in 1780: leaving to emigrate, he fled from the palace in June 1791.
During the French Revolution the palace was first abandoned and then moved as a national prison. After that it was the seat of the French Directory, and in 1799, the home of the Sénat conservateur and the first residence of Napoleon Bonaparte, as First Consul of the French Republic. The old apartments of Maria di Medici were altered. The floor, which the 80 senators only occupied in 1804, was built in the middle of the present Conference Hall.
Beginning in 1835 the architect Alphonse de Gisors added a new garden wing parallel to the old corps de logis, replicating the look of the original 17th-century facade so precisely that it is difficult to distinguish at first glance the old from the new. The new senate chamber was located in what would have been the courtyard area in-between.
The new wing included a library (bibliothèque) with a cycle of paintings (1845–1847) by Eugène Delacroix. In the 1850s, at the request of Emperor Napoleon III, Gisors created the highly decorated Salle des Conférences, which influenced the nature of subsequent official interiors of the Second Empire, including those of the Palais Garnier.
During the German occupation of Paris (1940–1944), Hermann Göring took over the palace as the headquarters of the Luftwaffe in France, taking for himself a sumptuous suite of rooms to accommodate his visits to the French capital. Since 1958 the Luxembourg palace has been the seat of the French Senate of the Fifth Republic.