Documentary Resources

Digital publishing site Architrave

Interoperable digital publishing site, final production of the Franco-German research project-“Art and Architecture in German Travel Accounts to Paris and Versailles in the Baroque Era” in human and social sciences (programme FRAL 2016 DFG - ANR).

Access the digital publishing site directly.

This site presents six accounts, mostly hitherto unseen, by German travellers who came to France between 1685 and 1723. It provides a bilingual commented edition with digitised facsimiles opposite the original documents, their transcription into modern German and a French translation. An encoded version of the texts in XML adopting the standards of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), can also be consulted here.

The corpus of sources includes writings by:

  • Christoph Pitzler (1657-1707)
  • Ferdinand Bonaventure comte de Harrach (1637-1706)
  • Lambert Friedrich Corfey (1668-1733)
  • Christian Friedrich Gottlieb von dem Knesebeck (vers 1685 ?-1720)
  • Leonhard Christoph Sturm (1669-1719)
  • Balthasar Neumann (1687-1753)

As a result of their journey to France, these men became important intermediaries for the dissemination in Germany of French achievements in matters of architecture. These were subject to a critical study to transform them and adapt them to the needs and concepts of the travellers’ home country. The edited documents here therefore are particularly of interest when studying the cultural exchanges between the countries of the Germanic Holy Roman Empire and France.

The “Edition” menu gives direct access to the texts, and in addition provides a general introduction, a detailed presentation of each author, the general bibliography of the project and the editorial standards (standards for transcription, translation, information on the indexes and standards for encoding).
Three indexes (persons, places and works) and a search engine (accessible by clicking on the magnifying glass at the top right) enable targeted searches.
The “Visualisations” menu offers interactive maps of Europe and Paris showing the travellers’ itineraries and offering direct access to the editions through places seen and mentioned by the travellers. A chronological frieze also presents the main historical points of reference.

The digital publishing site can be accessed from August 2021 via the Centre’s resources portal.

The ARCHITRAVE website is referenced on the Time Machine Europe platform. Funded by the European Union within the Horizon 2020 programme, the Time Machine Europe project is developing a research roadmap to build a digitization and computing infrastructure based on multi-scale modelling and simulation technologies and artificial intelligence.

Website produced with the support of:
Château de Versailles
Conseil général des Yvelines
©CRCV