Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The dovecote of Créteil was first mentioned in 1381, when it was part of a large seigneurial house. Its construction is probably contemporary of this date, in the second half of the 14th century. The site, organised around a rectangular courtyard, then included seigneurial housing, agricultural outbuildings (stable, sheepfold, barn), and accommodation for the farmer. The dovecote, to the northwest of the whole, was a symbol of prestige linked to the seigneurial right to possess pigeons, reserved for the nobility under the Old Regime.

In 1551, a well was added to the courtyard, marking a first notable change. In the 17th century (1672), the property passed to the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris and took the name of a small farm. Home buildings were rebuilt at the beginning of the 19th century, but several destructions followed: the barn and cartronerie disappeared at the beginning of the 19th century, while a fire before 1914 ravaged stables and houses. Only the dovecote remains, moved 50 metres in 1972 for urban reasons. The latter served as a model for Viollet-le-Duc for his Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française, highlighting its heritage importance.

Ranked a Historical Monument by decree of 6 April 1972, the dovecote is today the last visible trace of this seigneurial domain. The other elements (manor, dairy, crowding) have disappeared, but the archives describe a spatial organization typical of the medieval farms in francil, with a clear separation between living, production and storage spaces. The property, now private, illustrates the evolution of agricultural and seigneurial uses in Île-de-France, from the Middle Ages to the modern era.

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