Until the 16th century, the Hôtel de Bourgogne was the name of the Paris residence of the Dukes of Burgundy. Today, the last vestige is the Tour Jean sans Peur[1], 20 rue Étienne Marcel, in the 2nd arrondissement.
In 1548, the society of the Confrères de la Passion et de la Résurrection de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ built a theatre here, on rue Mauconseil (now rue Étienne Marcel) to put on their mystery plays. However, the hôtel de Bourgogne was banned from putting on religious pieces by a decree of the parliament of Paris and in exchange the confrères de la passion won the monopoly on secular drama in Paris, and rented their theatre out to itinerant theatrical troupes.
In 1624, Pierre Le Messier installed his own troupe at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and in 1628 Valleran Le Conte established his Troupe royale here thanks to the protection of Louis XIII. The Hôtel de Bourgogne then began to compete with other Parisian troupes little by little. Its repertoire was made up of farces with Turlupin, Gros-Guillaume, Gautier-Garguille, as well as tragedies by Alexandre Hardy or Jean Rotrou, and above all those of Pierre Corneille, when Floridor left the théâtre du Marais to take up leadership of the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1647, then of Jean Racine, with major interpreters such as Montfleury and la Champmeslé.
In 1660, the Comédie-Italienne shared the Hôtel de Bourgogne with the royal troupe for a while. In 1680, the troupe merged with that at the Hôtel Guénégaud. That troupe was already the result of a merger between the actors of the théâtre du Marais and of Molière's actors at the Illustre Théâtre, and also (by an edict of Louis XIV of France) a single permanent troupe was founded: the Comédie-Française.