Hôtel de Toulouse

Hôtel de Toulouse, headquarters of the Banque de France

The Hôtel de Toulouse, former Hôtel de La Vrillière, situated 1 rue de La Vrillière, in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, was built between 1635 and 1640 by François Mansart, for Louis Phélypeaux, seigneur de La Vrillière.[1]

Originally, the mansion had a large garden with a formal parterre to the southwest.

History

View of the front entrance of the Hôtel de Toulouse

In 1712, Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, comte de Toulouse (son of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan) acquired the Hôtel de La Vrillière and commissioned Robert de Cotte, Premier Architecte du Roi, to redesign it and bring important transformations to its interior.[2]

At the comte de Toulouse's death in 1737, the Hôtel became the Parisian residence of his son, Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon, duc de Penthièvre, and the birthplace of the latter's daughter, Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon-Penthièvre. The princesse de Lamballe, who was the duc de Penthièvre's widowed daughter-in-law, also resided there until the French Revolution.

Confiscated as a bien national ("national property") during the French Revolution, the Hôtel de Toulouse became the Imprimerie de la République in 1795. An imperial decree signed by Napoleon I on 6 March 1808, authorised the sale of the Hôtel de Toulouse to the Banque de France, which made it its official seat in 1811.[3]

Trivia

The Hôtel de Toulouse was the site of a scene from Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette with its famous Galerie dorée[4] (one of Robert de Cotte's masterpieces) as a room in a palace of her youth. Other films, both French, shot at the site are Vatel and Tous les matins du monde.

Gallery of residences

References

  1. ↑ Duma, Jean, Les Bourbon-Penthièvre (1678-1793): une nébuleuse aristocratique au XVIIIe siècle, Publication de la Sorbonne, Paris, 1995, p. 510,ISBN 2-85944-272-3, ISSN 0761-523 X . (French)
  2. ↑ Duma, Jean, Les Bourbon-Penthièvre (1678-1793): une nébuleuse aristocratique au XVIIIe siècle, p. 510, footnote n° 1 . (French)
  3. ↑ Lazare, Félix & Louis, Dictionnaire administratif et historique des rues et monuments de Paris, Paris, Bureau de la Revue municipale, 1855, p. 185 . (French)
  4. ↑ Article in L'Express/L'Expansion (French)

External links

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Coordinates: 48°51′55″N 2°20′23″E / 48.8652°N 2.33982°E / 48.8652; 2.33982

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