Hirtzbach · Haut-Rhin

The French garden and the 26-faced sundial of Reinach

At Hirtzbach in the Sundgau, the vanished English garden of Château de Reinach was replaced by a simple composition à la française that shelters a polyhedral sundial of twenty-six faces, each telling local time — classified in 2000.

From the source

Château de Reinach is a château at Hirtzbach, Haut-Rhin, in the Grand Est region of France. The recorded building campaigns date from the 18th and 19th centuries. It is protected as a monument historique at the higher of the two levels (classé). Details are drawn from the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture.

Mentioned in the source: visit · garden

Editorial reading

The Reinach family has owned the château since the fourteenth century; the present house was rebuilt in the early eighteenth century and restored under the Empire. The record states that the former English garden has disappeared and been replaced by a simple French-style composition, which holds a multi-faced sundial: twenty-six faces, each a dial, all giving local time, a scientific curiosity the record calls unique. The garden and three wrought-iron gates were listed in 1990; the façades and the polyhedral sundial in the garden were classified in 2000.

Recommendation

Twenty-six dials on one stone, all agreeing: the garden was laid out around it.

Sources

The château by this garden

Discover the architecture and history of this place at Le Roi du Château.

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