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Origin and history

The old Tivoli enclosure, also called Gué aux Dames in the 16th century, then Gué aux clercs and Enclos Tivoli in the following centuries, was a mansion or country house built in the 1st quarter of the 17th century. Located at the gates of Bourges, between Rue Charlet and Rue Ernest-Renan, it was built for Jean Mercier, doctor and professor of law at the University of Bourges. This place was famous for its gardens and statues, but most of the elements have disappeared over time.

In 1930, a gate dated 1612 and a well, carrying the weapons of the Mercier family, were saved from destruction and placed under arrest. These elements, originally intended for sale by the Fields after military decommissioning, were moved to the north garden of Bourges Cathedral. Around 1970, during archaeological excavations, the well was transferred to the courtyard of the former Jesuit College (now School of Fine Arts), while the location of the gate remains unknown.

The site, whose exact location is now poorly defined (estimated precision at 5/10), thus retains two major remains of this extinct madness. The door and the well, the only material testimonies, recall the historical importance of this place linked to the bourgeois intellectual elite of the seventeenth century, especially through the figure of Jean Mercier.

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