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Origin and history

The Jouffroy hotel, also known as the Jouffroy house or Jouffroy de Luxeuil hotel, is a private hotel built between the late 15th and early 16th centuries in Besançon, in the Battant district. Sponsored by Perrin Jouffroy de Luxeuil, ancestor of Marquis Jouffroy d'Abbans, he reflects the political and scientific influence of this local aristocratic family. At that time Besançon, the second largest city in the county of Burgundy under the Spanish domination of Habsburg, played a major strategic and cultural role.

In the 17th century, after the annexation of Franche-Comté to France by the treaties of Nijmegen (1678), the Jouffroy d'Aban family lost its influence. The hotel was then transformed into an inn, first known as the Green Lion Inn, and then into an academic pension in the 18th century for the children of the aristocracy and the bisontine bourgeoisie. In the 19th century, it became an inn ill-famished before being abandoned until the early 20th century.

In the 1920s, exiled white Russians set up an Orthodox chapel there, St Stephen and St Mary, still active today. Ranked a historic monument in 1937, the hotel was restored between 1989 and 2000: its Renaissance facades and chapel are preserved, while the house body has been home to the Besançon Centre Franche-Comté since 2000. Its architecture combines Gothic elements (opened balcony, pyramidal roof tower) and Renaissance (ogival window, wrought iron grilles).

The building bears witness to the social changes in Besançon, from the status of aristocratic residence to that of public and cultural place. Its basement still houses the Orthodox chapel, unique in the region, while its courtyard, open to the public, recalls its integration into the urban domain. The Jouffroy hotel remains one of the oldest preserved private hotels in the city, after the hotel of Champagney.

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