Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Hotel d'Eltz, located in Thionville, is built around 1551 by Bernard d'Eltz in a Luxembourg Renaissance style. From this period there remain the porch with two vaulted bays, three windows on the ground floor, the cellars and a large vaulted room (current courtroom). The veins of this room evoke those of the Tower aux Puces (1583-1586) or of the choir of the Saint John Baptist church of Volkrange, illustrating the regional architectural influence.

In 1899, the hotel was acquired by the Sisters of Divine Providence (or Our Lady of Providence according to the sources) to establish a boarding school for young girls. In 1903, neo-Gothic extensions were erected on the edge of Moselle, followed in 1914 by the purchase of a nearby house (No. 10, Place du Château). The architect Loosen then planned a chapel in the vaulted room and a staircase in the old courtyard, works postponed by the First World War and completed in 1919.

The site evolved with the addition of a floor to the 1903 (1919) building, and the construction of a new boarding school in 1934 near the present Notre Dame Square. In 1939, the hotel was transformed into a courthouse by the departmental architect Le Chevalier, who remodelled the chapel into a courtroom and expanded the liaison corps. The facades on the courtyard were restored around 1950. The Renaissance elements of the façade and the porch were listed as historical monuments in 1980.

The monument thus illustrates the functional changes of a private hotel: from aristocratic residence to school and then to judicial building. Its architecture combines Renaissance heritage and additions of the 19th and 20th centuries, reflecting the successive needs of its occupants. The protection of 1980 underscores the heritage value of the oldest parts, witnesses to the Luxembourg influence in Lorraine.

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