Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant
| Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant | |
|---|---|
| Park | Disneyland Park (Paris) |
| Land / area | Fantasyland |
| Type | Castle / walk-through |
| Opened | April 12, 1992 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Height req. | None |
| Status | Operating |
Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant (Sleeping Beauty Castle) is the fairy-tale castle at the centre of Disneyland Park (Paris) at Disneyland Paris, and the symbol of the resort. It opened with the park on April 12, 1992. It continues the Sleeping Beauty Castle tradition begun at the original Disneyland in California, but it is a far larger and more fantastical building than its Californian predecessor, and uniquely among Disney castles it is a walk-through attraction in its own right, housing a gallery above and a dragon below.[1]
History
Designing a castle for the first Disney park in Europe posed a problem no earlier park had faced. Executive designer Tony Baxter put it plainly: the Californian Sleeping Beauty Castle had been inspired by Neuschwanstein in southern Germany, and that European influence was fine for Anaheim — but real castles stood, in his words, just down the road from the Paris site, which challenged the team to think twice about the design.[2]
The answer, led by Imagineer Tom Morris, was not to compete with real medieval fortresses on their own terms but to lean deliberately into storybook fantasy. The design drew on the illuminated illustrations of Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry and on the monastery of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, and from Disney's own 1959 film Sleeping Beauty it borrowed details such as the square-cut trees around the castle. Pink walls, blue roofs, gold finials and ornamental snails on the spires all push the building away from history and towards illustration.
The castle was completed in October 1991, ahead of the park's opening, and stands about 50 metres (roughly 160 feet) tall — more than twice the height of the Californian castle. Like other Disney castles it is aligned so the sun does not pass directly behind it.
Experience
From the Central Plaza the castle reads as the park's centrepiece: it closes the view down Main Street, U.S.A., marks the entrance to Fantasyland, which passes through its arch, and serves as the backdrop for parades, stage shows and nighttime spectaculars.
Inside, the castle works on two levels. Upstairs, reached by a staircase within the building, is La Galerie de la Belle au Bois Dormant, the Sleeping Beauty Gallery. Here the story of Princess Aurora is told in a sequence of stained-glass windows and tapestries, alongside storybook displays. The stained glass was made in London under the supervision of Peter Chapman, who had previously worked on the restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris — a deliberate use of traditional craftsmanship inside a fantasy building.[3] A balcony at gallery level gives views back over Fantasyland.
Below, in the vaulted base of the castle, lies the second attraction: La Tanière du Dragon, the Dragon's Lair, where a huge Audio-Animatronic dragon sleeps, wakes, growls and puffs smoke in a dark cavern. The combination — a bright gallery telling a fairy tale above, and a chained beast in the dungeon below — is found in no other Disney castle, and it makes the Paris castle as much a pair of attractions as a landmark.
The castle also contains shops at ground level, selling glassware and Christmas ornaments, reached from both Main Street and Fantasyland sides.
See also
- La Tanière du Dragon
- Sleeping Beauty Castle
- Cinderella Castle
- Disneyland Park (Paris)
- Disneyland Paris
- Fantasyland