Today on AD, medieval architectural historian Meredith Cohen breaks down the intricate details found within the interiors of iconic Disney castles. Go in-depth and discover the real-life and historical influences behind designs featured in ‘Cinderella’, ‘Frozen’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’, and more.
Director: Alice Roth
Director of Photography: Grant Bell
Editor: William Long
Host: Meredith Cohen
Producer: Skylar Economy
Line Producer: Joe Buscemi
Associate Producer: Josh Crowe
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Kariesha Kidd
Camera Operator: Josh Andersen
Audio Engineer: Gray Thomas-Sowers
Production Assistant: Fernando Barajas
Post Production Supervisor: Andrew Montague
Post Production Coordinator: Holly Frew
Supervising Editor: Christina Mankellow
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Director: Alice Roth
Director of Photography: Grant Bell
Editor: William Long
Host: Meredith Cohen
Producer: Skylar Economy
Line Producer: Joe Buscemi
Associate Producer: Josh Crowe
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Kariesha Kidd
Camera Operator: Josh Andersen
Audio Engineer: Gray Thomas-Sowers
Production Assistant: Fernando Barajas
Post Production Supervisor: Andrew Montague
Post Production Coordinator: Holly Frew
Supervising Editor: Christina Mankellow
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 I'm Meredith Cohen, and I'm an architectural historian
00:03 specializing in medieval architecture.
00:05 Today, I'll be breaking down the interiors
00:07 of famous castles in Disney films.
00:09 This is the Sleeping Beauty throne room.
00:16 Here's everything that jumps out to me.
00:27 I see columns with capitals suggesting a great vault
00:33 in the middle there.
00:34 I see in the middle ground a narrow wall that's accentuated.
00:39 I see gables and pinnacles, very tall thrones, a canopy
00:44 over the thrones with a coat of arms.
00:47 To either side, I see these aisles
00:49 extending into the back behind the thrones and lancet windows
00:55 with stained glass.
00:56 On the capital here, I see a fleur-de-lis symbol.
00:59 There's another fleur-de-lis symbol over here.
01:02 And we know that Sleeping Beauty takes
01:04 place in the 14th century.
01:05 They actually tell us in the movie.
01:07 Now, father, you're living in the past.
01:09 This is the 14th century.
01:11 I'm a specialist of 13th and 14th century architecture.
01:15 And what I see here actually is not that.
01:17 It's what we call medievalism.
01:19 Medievalism is a kind of imagined recreation
01:24 of the Middle Ages, where one is pulling
01:27 from different medieval time periods
01:30 and accurate and inaccurate aspects.
01:33 One of the most inaccurate things here,
01:35 and the thing that we associate with the Middle Ages most,
01:37 is just how dark and gray this space is
01:41 and that the walls are left bare.
01:43 That is completely inaccurate.
01:45 Originally, in the Middle Ages, these walls
01:48 would be plastered, painted, and then covered with either
01:51 frescoes or with tapestries.
01:53 And even the columns and capitals
01:55 would have been painted in bright colors.
01:58 A throne room is traditionally a hall of justice,
02:02 where the king and the queen sit in state, ruling on trials,
02:06 ruling on questions.
02:08 In this scene, they're announcing
02:10 the birth of their new daughter, which probably wouldn't
02:13 have happened in real life.
02:14 The birth of a child is an important thing.
02:18 But they didn't really want daughters, right?
02:21 They wanted sons.
02:22 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:24 In the 13th and 14th century, a typical way of covering a roof
02:28 was through stone cross-ribbed vaults, like we see here.
02:32 A Gothic vaulted roof is a stone roof
02:35 that covers the entire space.
02:37 And the vault refers to the stonework that's actually
02:39 covering that wide space.
02:42 The one we're looking at here is using a quadripartite ribbed
02:45 vault. That means you have two ribs crossing
02:48 to create four spaces that is filled in with stones
02:52 called webbing.
02:53 Pointed arches are typical of Gothic architecture
02:57 because the point is more structurally
02:59 stable than a rounded arch.
03:01 Tracery is decorative work in stone
03:05 that makes it look kind of like lace.
03:08 And it can be really beautiful.
03:10 Here, we're looking at a sex foil tracery oculus,
03:14 six petals on the right side.
03:17 In another shot, you can see this door
03:19 is decorated with a tracery gable that
03:22 extends upward with these repeated floral motifs.
03:26 These windows here are very typical of the Gothic period.
03:29 And they remind me of those at the St. Chappelle.
03:32 Lancet windows are very tall, narrow windows
03:35 in the shape of a keyhole.
03:37 This latticework or diamond pattern
03:39 feels very kind of 1950s or Harlequin-like,
03:43 not typical to the Middle Ages.
03:45 Stained glass actually is predominantly
03:48 blue and red, deeply colored glass, not pinks and greens
03:53 and light blues.
03:55 Sleeping Beauty is, of course, a fantasy film.
03:57 And they're trying to pull together
03:59 a lot of these beautiful ideas and images
04:02 to create a fantasy world.
04:04 But they are drawing from a lot of medieval sources
04:07 and in a way that is highly inaccurate.
04:10 And that's what we call medievalism.
04:13 Here's a scene of coronation in Frozen.
04:15 [CHOIR SINGING]
04:18 It looks to be taking place inside a chapel.
04:26 I see lancet windows on the first level,
04:30 covered with a kind of gable frame.
04:33 We see posts like piers that are holding up
04:38 some kind of wooden arch.
04:40 I see some decoration here, cross-like decoration,
04:43 arcading.
04:44 And then we see on a gallery level up above
04:48 these upper windows a choir singing.
04:50 There is another kind of hybrid or mishmash
04:53 in the architecture here.
04:55 Not only do we have kind of all the Scandinavian motifs,
04:59 but then we have these European Gothic elements of the windows
05:03 with the gable frames.
05:05 The fact that this architectural space is made of wood
05:09 tells me that it's probably taking place in Scandinavia.
05:14 This space seems to be drawing from stave church architecture
05:18 that we also see in Scandinavia and in particular in Norway.
05:22 This is Arendelle Castle, and it looks very much
05:25 like a stave church.
05:27 Stave churches are so-called because they're
05:29 made with staves, which are pieces of wood that
05:32 are beveled to fit together, kind of like a wine
05:36 barrel or a whiskey barrel.
05:38 The stave church is a type of architecture
05:40 that goes back to the early Middle Ages,
05:44 to the great Viking Age.
05:46 And we see these cross motifs, which
05:49 are called Andreaskursa in Swedish,
05:54 or the St. Andrew's Cross.
05:56 It's a decorative motif.
05:57 The detailing in frozen is very similar to the church
06:00 we see here with the use of the St. Andrew's Cross
06:04 and the elaborate architectural detailing.
06:06 In the interior, we see it's painted
06:09 with flowers and scrollwork, usually
06:12 of a floral motif, which is very typical of 18th century
06:17 Scandinavian painting.
06:18 But this space is definitely an older space.
06:22 So it's referring to the fact that this family has had
06:24 this castle for a very long time.
06:27 Now we're going to talk about the staircase in Cinderella.
06:30 [MUSIC PLAYING]
06:35 [MUSIC PLAYING]
06:37 This is crazy.
06:39 This is an amazing staircase, but definitely not
06:43 like any staircase I've seen in a castle before.
06:46 Here's everything that jumps out to me.
06:48 We have these great big arches with windows
06:51 and great huge curtains and this enormous staircase
06:55 that kind of funnels down into this bridge-like aspect.
06:59 And then it fans open.
07:00 And then in front here, we have some kind
07:02 of vase with a very Baroque kind of handle.
07:06 Immediately, to me, this just looks
07:07 like the kind of 1950s debutante ball space
07:11 or like this Hollywood red carpet style con staircase.
07:15 What it does remind me of is the grand staircase that's
07:19 in the Palais Garnier in Paris that
07:22 was built in the 19th century.
07:24 We have this notion of public life.
07:26 And everyone goes to the opera to see the opera,
07:29 but also to be seen.
07:30 These staircases were really designed to show the public
07:34 and show the people there each other, to show their dresses,
07:37 to meet up with people on this grand staircase.
07:40 Most interior medieval staircases were very narrow.
07:44 They were primarily used as practical passageways.
07:48 And that helped really the builders
07:49 get around the different spaces that they need to construct.
07:53 Or sometimes royal bedrooms would
07:55 have these little tiny staircases behind the beds
07:58 so the king could go visit his mistresses in secret.
08:02 If we were going to talk about an opulent staircase
08:05 in a castle, one that comes to mind
08:07 is that at the Chateau de Chambord in France.
08:10 This is a really special staircase
08:12 designed by Leonardo da Vinci.
08:14 This staircase is innovative because it
08:16 has a double helix spiral.
08:19 So we would see really grand staircases
08:22 on the exterior of palaces or castles.
08:26 One that comes to mind is at the Palais de la Cité in Paris,
08:31 whose staircase goes back to the 13th century.
08:34 And this kind of exterior massive grand staircases
08:38 are for the reception of ambassadors and special people.
08:42 And it also brought people from the ground level
08:45 up to the piano nobile, the noble level,
08:49 where special people met each other, right?
08:52 Royalty, high dignity, ambassadors.
08:56 Not the riffraff of everyday life
08:58 who stayed on the ground floor.
09:00 These staircases are all over Disney movies.
09:03 You see them in Cinderella, you see it in Beauty and the Beast,
09:05 you see it in Frozen.
09:07 It seems to be pure fantasy.
09:09 I haven't seen anything like this in a castle.
09:12 So for Cinderella, I'm not really sure
09:15 what date this takes place in, but it
09:17 seems to be very much aligned with the idea of fantasy
09:21 that it's drawing from many different sources
09:24 and many different time periods to create
09:26 this imagined, wonderful, exceptional space of dreams.
09:32 Now we're going to talk about the library
09:33 in Beauty and the Beast.
09:35 [MUSIC PLAYING]
09:38 Here's everything that jumps out to me.
09:44 Yeah, this is a kind of library that one
09:46 would see in a palace or castle or aristocratic household.
09:51 There are a couple of libraries that come to mind here.
09:54 The Vienna National Library in Austria,
09:57 the Biblioteca Comunale di Emula in Italy,
10:01 and the Library of St. Gall in Switzerland.
10:04 They are just extremely Baroque, very highly decorated,
10:09 beautiful spaces to find yourself in and to read.
10:13 I see neoclassical tapered columns.
10:16 I see this little balustrade here.
10:18 I see a fancy spiral staircase here.
10:22 Florida ceiling books.
10:24 We know that Disney was referencing the Baroque style.
10:27 There's even a line in Beauty and the Beast
10:29 where Cogsworth says--
10:31 If it's not Baroque, don't fix it.
10:32 [GIGGLING]
10:35 These round globes were common features in libraries,
10:38 a sign that you understand the world, that you know the world,
10:43 and that you will dominate the world.
10:46 The Vienna National Library even has
10:48 a whole collection of globes.
10:51 The tapered columns in Beauty and the Beast
10:54 look like the tapered columns I see at the library in Emula.
10:58 If you have a spiral staircase like this in your house,
11:00 it's not the most direct way to the upper parts of your shelf.
11:04 So they're really purely decorative.
11:06 This church, Saint-Étienne-du-Mont in Paris,
11:08 has these amazing stone spiral staircases
11:12 from the end of the 15th century.
11:14 The only thing that is definitely inaccurate
11:16 is this fireplace.
11:17 Book collections like this were incredibly expensive.
11:21 You wouldn't have a fireplace in the middle of your library
11:25 that could potentially burn them all.
11:27 [SCREAMING]
11:32 Well, this is somewhat accurate for the time period
11:35 to have a library like this.
11:36 But what we know about Beast is that Beast was illiterate.
11:40 Why don't you read it to me?
11:41 I can't.
11:42 You mean you never learned?
11:44 So what they're trying to say is that there's
11:46 something behind Beast, referencing his family's
11:49 great wealth, their longevity over the centuries,
11:53 and that there is a high level of culture and education
11:56 in his household.
11:57 The Disney creators are really drawing from popular culture
12:04 and what people imagine about the past.
12:07 If you want to see some incredible castle or palace
12:10 interiors, there's obviously Versailles.
12:12 But if you have the chance, also go
12:14 to Vaux-le-Vicomte, which is nearby,
12:16 in Paris, which preceded Versailles
12:19 and is made by the same architect and designers.
12:22 (upbeat music)