The « Grand Pignon » of Poilvache is an exceptional jewel: a witness to civil architecture in a rural and military context.
The house at the Grand Gable is the best preserved civil building in the fortress. It is likely that it was the property of one of the noble families which we know from the texts that they owned property in Poilvache. Their social status would in any case have allowed them to have such a building constructed, expensive due to the existence of at least one complete stone gable wall comprising large cut blocks.
The house had four levels: cellar and cistern in the basement, main living room and perhaps kitchen on the ground floor, bedroom(s) upstairs and finally the attic.
As part of the very beautiful exhibition dedicated to Poilvache at the Maison du Patrimoine Médiéval Mosan, new hypotheses have been formulated by archaeologists and historians about this house and its method of construction. You can discover them in this magnificent simulation (extracted from a Ma Télé broadcast from June 6, 2018)…
Poilvache 