Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Hotel du Petit-Saint-Vincent, located at 1 rue Saint-Martin in Laon, was built between 1529 and 1534 to serve as an urban residence for the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Vincent. The religious, owners since the 16th century of a house between the Gerbe Hotel and the Crown Hotel, acquired in 1527 houses at the beginning of St.Martin Street to build this new building. The building, homogeneous and made of limestone, includes two turrets framing the facade, an inner courtyard with an octagonal tower housing a spiral staircase, and a second triangular gable building decorated with allegorical statues. The chapel, added in 1537, surmounts a vaulted passage between the street and the courtyard.

During the religious wars, the hotel became a stronghold of the leaguers, where the abbot, clothed with a breastplate, fought alongside Captain Farsin. In the 18th century, the building was rented to private individuals, such as the Blondelas pension master, before becoming a revolutionary meeting place under the name Rue de la Réunion. Ranked a Historic Monument in 1964, it now houses the Historic Monuments Agency and the Aisne Tourist Office. Its restoration in the 20th century made it possible to find its original sills and crumbs, erased by later modifications.

Architecturally, the hotel combines Renaissance elements (windows, decorated gable) and medieval elements (conical towers, spiral staircase). The vaulted cellars in a cradle, the semi-out-of-work stairway with dog-arched vaults, and the glazed chapel bear witness to remarkable craftsmanship. The gable statues, representing a man with a cup and a woman with a sword, could symbolize virtues or allegories, although their exact meaning remains uncertain. The site, owned by the department, illustrates the role of abbeys as economic and cultural powers in the Renaissance Picardie.

The historical sources, such as the works of Jean Marquiset (Through the Old Laon, 1902) or the article of Souchon (1892), underline its heritage importance. The hotel, passed from a monastic refuge to a place of political power, then to a school and revolutionary institution, embodies Laon's social changes between the Middle Ages and the modern era. Its classification in 1964 preserved a rare testimony of religious civil architecture of the first French Renaissance.

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