Hauteville House

The Hauteville House is a town house on Guernsey in the capital of St Peter Port. The French writer Victor Hugo lived after a stay in Jersey in this house from 1856 to 1870 in exile, since he had been banished from France in 1851.

History

The house had had built in 1800 a British corsair. It had the reputation of a haunted house, in which a woman should haunt who had committed suicide; it was therefore a longer time uninhabited. Victor Hugo bought the house on May 16, 1856 Help the fee that had earned him the publication of the work Les Contemplations. Due to the residence he was allowed to stay on the island, because according to the laws of Guernsey, a landowner could not be expelled. Hugo had it converted to his own design, furnish and decorate.

Victor Hugo lived in the house 38 Rue Hauteville in Saint Peter Port during the years 1856 to 1870 and visited there 1872/73, 1875 and in the summer of 1878 again. In 1862 he completed here already from the 1830s, planned and begun in 1845 in France Les Misérables novel ( Les Misérables ), which was later made ​​into a film in many ways. 1866 was his work, Les Travailleurs de la mer ( The Toilers of the Sea ), a novel set in Guernsey and portrays the hard life of the coastal fishermen.

In March 1927, gave Hugo's descendants the house with the inventory to the City of Paris. Currently, it houses a French honorary consulate as well as the Victor Hugo Museum. The rooms on three floors and the attic - Hugo's work " Lookout " - Show the Hugo's original equipment and the plant-filled garden are open to visitors.

The door

Banner over the front door

Hauteville House, Garden View

Lookout, study