Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Tonduti de Malijac hotel, also known as the Tonduti de Saint-Légier or the Escarene, is a private hotel located in Avignon, in the Vaucluse department. Acquired in 1641 by Pierre-François Tonduti (1583-1669), a jurisconsult, astronomer and doctor of law at the University of Avignon, it was rebuilt on a primitive building formerly owned by Pompey Catalina, colonel of papal infantry. Pierre-François Tonduti, close to scientists such as Peiresc and Gassendi, decorated the grand salon by Nicolas Mignard between 1658 and 1659 with a cycle of paintings on the life of Apollo, now partly lost or dispersed.

The hotel remained in the Tonduti family until the end of the 18th century, before being rented or occupied by political and commercial circles in the 19th century. In 1881 General Maccarani, heir to the Tonduti, sold it to Dr.Achille Isnard. In 1881 Jean-Baptiste Mignon sold the 20 paintings of the salon, including nine of the cycle of Apollo, damaged in 1977, to Jean-Baptiste Mignon, who installed them in his castle in Valmate (Haute-Vienne). Some paintings were later acquired by the Musée Calvet d'Avignon.

Partially listed as historical monuments in 1983, the hotel retains its facades, roofs and an interior staircase with wrought iron ramp. Its history reflects the links between the intellectual elites of Provence, artistic patronage and urban transformations of Avignon, the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.

Pierre-François Tonduti, the central figure of the hotel, was also a primicier of the University of Avignon (1642, 1662), a general auditor of the Légation (1658), and knight of Saint-Michel (1666). His works in astronomy, such as the measurement of the latitude of Avignon in 1634, and his exchanges with scholars such as Athanasius Kircher, underline the role of the hotel as a place of knowledge and power under the Old Regime.

In the 19th century, the hotel had various uses: royalist circle under the First Empire, circle of commerce between 1830 and 1862, then division into housing. These transformations illustrate the adaptation of Avignon's private hotels to social and economic change, while marking the decline of their original aristocratic vocation.

External links