I am going to tackle a bit condense history of the branches of government in France especially its three main palaces. Oh wait, it is a Republic but we have the President and congress living in palaces !!!, go figure my loving French. Oh yes these are the Palais de l’Elysées, Palais du Luxembourg, and Palais Bourbon ! I found one picture of the Luxembourg that made me do this post, see others in my blog, Therefore, here is my take on the République Française !!! Hope you enjoy the post as I.
The palais de l’Élysée or the Élysée Palace,(see post) formerly known as the Élysée-Bourbon, is a former Parisian mansion located at 55 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré in the 8éme arrondissement of Paris. It was built in 1720 for Louis-Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, Count of Évreux, the Élysée Palace has an illustrious history as France, I have written a post on it so will make this entry short as possible,The closest transport to it is metro Champs-Élysées–Clemenceau on lines 1 and 13 or bus no, 42 and 73, I came by often as the US embassy is nearby and parked at parking Concorde in the Place de la Concorde,
The fame Madame de Pompidou lived here as early as 1748, By November 15, 1757, at the age of 36, Madame de Pompadour had, by her will, appointed her brother, the Marquis de Marigny, as her sole legatee. However, if the king accepted these provisions, he decided upon the death of the Marquise that the Hôtel d’Évreux (initial name) would now be used to house the extraordinary ambassadors, in place of the Hôtel des Pontchartrain, located on rue des Petits-Champs. After the death of the Marquise, on April 15, 1764, the hotel was used for a year to centralize and sell all the furniture and works of art amassed by the latter in her numerous properties. Nine years after the death of the Marquise, in 1773, the hotel became the property of the banker Nicolas Beaujon, who acquired the Hôtel d’Évreux on October 2, 1773, He moved in on November 30, 1774.
The last occupant of the hotel before the French revolution was Louise-Marie-Bathilde d’Orléans, Duchess of Bourbon, who moved in in 1787. Princess of the Blood, daughter of the Duke of Orléans, sister of Philippe Égalité, aunt of Louis-Philippe I, mother of the Duke of Enghien, daughter-in-law of the Prince of Condé, who previously occupied the premises. On July 17, she bought the Hôtel Beaujon from Louis XVI, her cousin. The Hôtel Beaujon was renamed the Hôtel de l’Élysée because of its garden, whose yew trees blended with those of the Carré de l’Élysée, the garden on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. During the French Revolution, Bathilde d’Orléans was nicknamed “Citizen Truth”, because of her new republican spirit. Her brother, “Philippe-Égalité”, voted for the death of king Louiw XVI before being himself condemned to death. She nevertheless suffered reprisals from the flight to Austria of her nephew Louis-Philippe d’Orléans, Duke of Chartres, in April 1793: all the members of the House of Bourbon present in France were imprisoned by the Convention. The Duchess was imprisoned in the Fort Saint-Jean prison in Marseille for a year and a half and only miraculously escaped the Terror; freed in 1795, she returned to her Parisian palace. However, after her brother’s death by guillotine, she had offered the Convention properties in an attempt to be freed from her prison. The Convention ignored this, effectively requisitioning her properties. The coup d’état of September 4, 1797, against the monarchists, however, exiled the Duchess from France: she was moved with her sister-in-law and her cousin, the Prince of Conti, to the Spanish border. Bathilde d’Orléans would not see France again until seventeen years later, with the fall of the First Empire. The Directory then sold the hotel as national property. The Consulate, in 1799, Emperor Napoleon I’s brother-in-law, Marshal of the Empire Joachim Murat, purchased the property on August 6, 1805. He settled there with his wife Caroline Bonaparte and made it one of his many luxurious residences. The most important addition is the “imperial staircase”, a grand ceremonial staircase with two flights, built into the east wall of the vestibule of honor, the banister being made of gilded wooden palms, symbols of victory. Murat left for Naples, Napoleon I occupied the mansion until the French campaign, after a short occupation by Josephine de Beauharnais. The Emperor therefore recovered the palace on February 13, 1812. In 1814, after the defeats of the French campaign and the (first) abdication of Napoleon, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, a great adversary of the Emperor, took possession of the palace. In the summer of 1815, the Tsar allowed the Duke of Wellington, victor of the Battle of Waterloo, to have the palace. Despite her pleas to king Louis XVIII, Bathilde d’Orléans, Duchess of Bourbon, could not recover her mansion, the king having not forgotten that she had chosen not to emigrate and displayed pro-revolutionary sentiments. She donated it in December 1815 to her nephew, second son of King Charles X: the Duke of Berry, who moved in with his wife Marie-Caroline, in 1816. The Élysée Palace remained largely empty between 1820 and 1848, with a few exceptions, when Louis XVIII and then Charles X intended it to accommodate foreign monarchs or princes passing through Paris.
During the provisional government of the Second Republic, the palace took the name of “Élysée National”. Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the first president of the Republic elected by universal suffrage in 1848, was assigned not the Tuileries but the Élysée Palace, a memory of his uncle who had made it his beloved residence but had abdicated there. But unable to run again, the president staged a coup d’état in the third year of his four-year term: he became emperor under the name of Napoleon III. Single, Napoleon III noticed that the courts of Europe were in no hurry to propose a bride to the nephew of yesterday’s enemy. It was finally a love marriage that took place with Eugenia (Eugénie) de Montijo,of Spain. She lived there from January 22 to 30, 1853. In 1855, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom stayed there; during the 1867 World’s Fair, the Emperor of Russia Alexander II, the Emperor of Austria Franz Joseph I, the King of Sweden Charles XV and the King of the Netherlands William III, as well as the Ottoman Sultan Abdulaziz, took up residence there. With the fall of the Second Empire,(Napoleon III), the palace was renamed for the sixth time and became the Élysée National; it was handed over to the State on December 22, 1870. The fall of Napoleon III in 1870 put an end to the monarchical era of the palace.
President Adolphe Thiers stayed there for only one month in 1872 and one month at the beginning of the following year. On July 15, 1873, the new president Patrice de Mac Mahon received the Shah of Persia Nasseredin Shah , and settled permanently in the palace from September 1874 with his wife and four children. But it was only by the law of January 22, 1879 that the Élysée officially became the residence of the presidents of the French Republic. On June 10, 1940, the palace hosted the last Parisian Council of Ministers in the history of the Third Republic, during which the government decided to leave Paris. Abandoned between 1940 and 1946, it was not requisitioned by the nazis, Hitler agreeing to leave this symbolic place vacant but refusing that Pétain invest it. After the war, it was not occupied by the heads of state of the Provisional Government of the French Republic. Vincent Auriol and the “First Lady of France” Michelle Auriol took possession of the place on January 16, 1947. Charles de Gaulle occupied this place which he hated because of its loaded history and its location in a posh neighborhood. The General used as an office the former bedroom of the Empress Eugénie, called the Golden Salon. This room, located in the central axis of the palace, will serve as an office for all the presidents of the Fifth Republic (since 1958), except Valéry Giscard d’Estaing who chose as one-room office located in the eastern corner of the central building. The palace was first opened to the public on July 14, 1977, by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. Every year since 1990, during Heritage Days, the Élysée Palace has been open to the public, with some rooms in the East Wing apartments being added to the tour starting in 2007. In 2024, a museum opened opposite the palace: the Maison Elysée. It presents the architecture of the palace and its evolution, as well as a reconstruction of part of the Golden Salon.
The Palais de l’Elysées on its history : https://www.elysee.fr/exposition/evreux-300
The Paris tourist office on the Elysée Palace : https://parisjetaime.com/eng/culture/palais-de-l-elysee-p1004
The Palais du Luxembourg Palace, located in the 6éme arrondissement of Paris in the northern part of the Jardin du Luxembourg Gardens (see posts), is the seat of the Senate, which was installed in 1799 in the palace built at the beginning of the 17C by Marie de Medici, Queen of France and Navarre, during her regency. You get here easy on the RER B Port Royal or bus 82 and 89, The palace and garden have kept the name of the former mansion on which they were built: the Hôtel de Luxembourg. It belonged to François de Piney-Luxembourg, who had it built and lived there for some time before selling it to Marie de Médicis. The name has only a distant connection with the Duchy of Luxembourg, The regent Marie de Medici, widow of Henry IV, purchased the mansion and estate known as “Luxembourg” in 1612 and commissioned the construction of a palace in 1615. She herself laid the foundation stone on April 2, 1615.
The construction site was not completed in 1631 when Marie de Medici had to leave, exiled on the orders of her son. Marie de Medici, upon her death in 1642, bequeathed the estate to her favorite child, her second son Gaston Duke of Orléans, younger brother of King Louis XIII. The building then bore the name Palace of Orléans. It passed by succession to his widow, Marguerite de Lorraine, then to his eldest daughter the Duchess of Montpensier who sold it to her younger sister, the Duchess of Guise in 1660. She donated it to the king, her cousin, in 1694. In 1715, the Luxembourg Palace returned to the regent Philippe d’Orléans, who left it to his eldest daughter, Marie-Louise-Élisabeth d’Orléans ,Duchess of Berry, and then to her younger daughter, Louise Élisabeth d’Orléans, Dowager Queen of Spain. The Marie de’ Medici Gallery, in the east wing of the Luxembourg Palace. Exhibiting a selection of the King’s Paintings alongside the Rubens cycle, a series of paintings had been commissioned from Rubens for each of these apartments, which were to form two cycles: the cycle of the life of Marie de Medici, intended for the gallery of her apartment, and a cycle of the life of Henry IV, which was not completed (intended for the King’s gallery). The series devoted to the Queen Mother is now housed in the Louvre. it was the first art museum open to the public in France, foreshadowing the creation of the Louvre in 1793. The current Luxembourg Museum has inherited this museum tradition. By an edict of December 1778, King Louis XVI granted the estate and the castle to his brother Louis-Stanislas-Xavier, Count of Provence and future Louis XVIII, as an increase in appanage. After his flight in 1791, the Luxembourg Palace was declared “national property”.
During the French revolution and following the events of August 10, 1792, Louis XVI was briefly placed under house arrest there before being handed over to the Paris Commune. During the Terror, in June 1793, the Luxembourg palace formally became a prison, named the National House of Security, During this period, nearly 800 people were detained there, a third of whom were guillotined, including Georges Danton, Camille Desmoulins, the Countess of Noailles, and Fabre d’Églantine. The painter Jacques-Louis David, also imprisoned in the Luxembourg during this period and who was able to keep his painting equipment during his incarceration, painted the only landscape attributed to him there. The palace was assigned to the Directory by decision of September 18, 1795. Bonaparte, First Consul, moved into the Luxembourg Palace on November 15, 1799. The Conservative Senate, an assembly created by the Constitution of the Year VIII, moved in on December 28, 1799. In 1814, it was assigned to the Chamber of Peers. Thereafter, it retained its parliamentary function, except for a few short periods. The original building, now called the Petit Luxembourg, had been the official residence of the President of the Senate since 1825. Following the February Revolution of 1848, there was initially no longer a Senate. The Luxembourg Palace then housed a “Government Commission for Workers,” which was soon called the “Luxembourg Commission.” The Luxembourg Palace was subsequently assigned to all successive upper chambers: the Senate of the Second Empire and the Senate of the Third Republic from 1879. Between 1871 and 1879, Parliament sat in Versailles; during this time, the Prefect of the Seine sat in the Luxembourg Palace. In 1940, the palace was occupied by the headquarters of the West Luftwaffe, with the generals staying at the Petit Luxembourg. In 1943, a blockhouse was built in the Luxembourg Gardens, to the east of the palace: 14 meters deep, it was to have ten shelter galleries, but only seven were completed by the Liberation in August 1944 (known as the “Medici Shelter”, it is now used as a storage facility). In 1944, the palace became the seat of the Provisional Consultative Assembly. It has been assigned to the Council of the Republic since 1946 and to the Senate of the Fifth Republic since 1958.
The official Senate of France on the Palais du Luxembourg : https://www.senat.fr/lng/en/the-luxembourg-palace.html
The Paris tourist office on the Senate Palais du Luxembourg: https://parisjetaime.com/eng/culture/senat-palais-du-luxembourg-p1046
The Palais Bourbon is the building that has housed the National Assembly (see post) since 1879, located on the Quai d’Orsay in the 7éme arrondissement of Paris, in the row between the Pont de la Concorde and the Place de la Concorde. This one written a post on it so will condense here as much as possible, You get here easy on metro Invalides lines 8 and 13 as RER C and Assambléé Nationale line 12, and bus 63 and 73.
The Palais Bourbon was built on the orders of Louise-Françoise de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Nantes, the legitimated daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan, to serve as a residence. The Duchess of Bourbon was the wife of Louis III de Bourbon-Condé, 6th Prince of Condé. The Palais Bourbon and the Hôtel de Lassay (current residence of the President of the National Assembly) were built simultaneously, from 1722 to 1728, on land acquired by the Duchess of Bourbon in 1720 and part of which she gave to her lover, the Marquis de Lassay. The Palace, completed in 1728, which was reminiscent of the Grand Trianon in style, was considered in the 18C as “the greatest ornament of the city after the royal houses.” After the Duchess’s death, the palace was acquired by Louis XV, who ceded it to the Prince of Condé in 1764, Louis V Joseph de Bourbon-Condé having emigrated after July 14, 1789, the Palais Bourbon was confiscated in 1791 and declared national property. It housed a prison ,the Maison de la Révolution for a few months, then, in 1794, the future École Polytechnique before being assigned to the Council of Five Hundred by decree of September 18, 1795. The Five Hundred did not move in until January 21, 1798. The Palais Bourbon was then assigned to the lower house of parliament under the various regimes: the Council of Five Hundred, the Legislative Body, the Chamber of Deputies, and the National Assembly. It was between 1827 and 1832 that the palace took on its current appearance in its interior layout. The palace remained the property of the Princes of Condé, Dukes of Bourbon, until the French revolution. During the Restoration, the Prince of Condé wanted to recover his property. He regained possession of the Hôtel de Lassay, but was forced to rent the Palace, transformed into a hemicycle, to the Chamber of Deputies “on a three-year lease.” The State definitively became the owner of the Palais Bourbon in 1827 and of the Hôtel de Lassay in 1843.
From 1848 to 1851, the assembly of the Second Republic was housed in the “Carton Room”, a temporary rectangular building built in the main courtyard. The building has not undergone any major modifications since then, only additions. The hemicycle is raised, unlike the palace. It is bordered on the main courtyard side by the Pujol salons (decorated in trompe-l’oeil, its grisaille-tinted paintings represent the capitularies of Charlemagne, the Salic law and Louis-Philippe taking the oath to the Constitutional Charter of August 14, 1830. The hemicycle has red velvet seats. 64 seats are decorated with a commemorative plaque of an illustrious parliamentarian who sat in this place, (I have visited a couple times!) From 1798 onwards, the Palais Bourbon housed all the lower houses of the French parliaments, with the exception of a short period from 1871 to 1879 (during which time it sat in the hall of the South Wing of the Palace of Versailles, following the insurrection of the Paris Commune) and then after the flight of the government and Parliament to Bordeaux and then to Vichy during WWII in 1940.
The official Assemblée Nationale de France on its history : https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/histoire-et-patrimoine
The Paris tourist office on the National Assembly of France: https://parisjetaime.com/eng/culture/assemblee-nationale-palais-bourbon-p1054
There you go folks , a condense historical story on these magnificent palaces of the the trouble history of my belle France. Now,you know a bit more of them and can think that our traditions runs deep way back in the house of France! Again, hope enjoy this post on the République Française !!! as I
And remember, happy travels, good health, and many cheers to all !!!
Paris1972-Versailles2003 