Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was elected President of the Republic on 11 December 1848, by universal male suffrage. He was sworn in on 20 December before the Assembly.
Built in the 1720s for Louise-Francoise de Bourbon, daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan and Princess of Conde, the Palais Bourbon was requisitioned in 1790 to house in 1794 the Commission des travaux publics (Public Works Commission) and the École des Ponts et Chaussés (School of bridges and roads). The following year, the new assignment of the palace as the Conseil des Cinq-Cents led to important works to create a hemisphere, definitively transforming the aristocratic palace into a legislative building.
The architects Jacques-Pierre de Gisors and Étienne-Chérubin Lecomte installed a semi-circular room with terraces. A gallery adorned with white ionic columns of white stucco housed galleries for the public. Facing the assembly, the president’s desk lightly surmounted the speaker’s tribune, the whole thing being placed in an apse decorated on each side with statues of orators from Antiquity. In honour of the Emperor, an antique statue of Napoleon was commissioned in March 1804 from Antoine-Denis Chaudet, to be placed behind the stands or in front of the members of the Legislative Body behind the rostrum. Several copies were made, one of which is preserved at the Chateau de Compiegne. In 1814, the Condé family recovered the Bourbon palace, which it rented for 124,000 francs to the State, before deciding to sell it in 1827. The assembly room remained in place until 1830, when it was replaced by a temporary structure before important works, in 1848.
See the Assembly Room: work of the artist François-Frédéric Lemot, the tribune in grilet marble from Italy celebrates the Republic, with reliefs depicting the bust of the Republic framed by the winged allegories of “History” and of “Fame”. Behind are the mahogany desk adorned with gilded bronze and the armchair (from the workshop of the cabinetmaker, Jacob) intended for the President of the Assembly.
See another picture of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, candidate for the presidential election of 1848.