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Origin and history

The House of the Three Nourrices, located in Narbonne, is a building whose origins date back to the 12th century. In medieval times, it was used as a commercial building, housing shops on the ground floor and upstairs dwellings. This type of construction reflected the urban organization typical of Languedoc's commercial cities, where economic activities and domestic life coexisted in the same place.

In the middle of the 16th century, the house was profoundly transformed by the Guissane family, a narbonnaise bourgeois lineage whose members held consular functions. The modifications, made around 1558, adopt a marked Renaissance style: the facade is enhanced by two crosses, one of which is decorated with five carved cariatids. It was at that time that she took the house name of the Three Nourrices, with reference to the Hotel of the Three Kings, a nearby establishment now disappeared. This choice of name illustrates the symbolic importance of urban buildings in the Renaissance Narbonne.

The following centuries saw new developments: oculi were pierced in the eighteenth century, while the interior was modernized with typical Louis XVI decorations (marble fireplaces, cornice ceilings, plaster roses). These transformations reflect the evolution of aristocratic and bourgeois tastes, as well as the adaptation of domestic spaces to successive modes. In 1913, the house was listed as a historic monument, recognizing its heritage value.

In the 21st century, a restoration carried out in 2006, supported by the Crédit Agricole Foundation, preserved its iconic architectural elements. The house thus embodies nearly nine centuries of urban history, mixing medieval heritage, reborn fascists and modern adaptations. Its current location, at the corner of the streets of the Three Nourrices and Edgar Quinet, makes it a privileged witness to the commercial and bourgeois past of Narbonne.

Historical sources, such as the works of Louis Berthomieu (1913) or the references of the Merimée base, underline his role in local heritage. The cariatids of the facade, rare elements in Narbonnaise civil architecture, and the interior decorations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, make this a remarkable example of the evolution of urban dwellings in Occitanie.

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