Places, museums, monuments : 83
-
Place, museum or monumentChâteau de Grosbois Napoleonic Museum
At the end of the 16th century, the treasurer of the 'Epargne', lord of Blayes and Chardonnet, Raoul Moreau, built a château on the previously royal land of Grosbois. This estate was subsequently sold to the son of Charles IX, Charles d'Angoulème. And it was Angoulème who gave the park and the château its present-day […]
-
Place, museum or monumentHôtel de Beauharnais
This private mansion was built by Boffrand in 1714 and bought by Eugène de Beauharnais in 1803. Renovated by Bataille, a neo-Egyptian portico was added on to the front overlooking the yard in 1807 while the interior was lavishly decorated. The Green drawing room on the ground floor is decorated with landscapes by Hubert Robert […]
-
Place, museum or monumentLouvre Museum Second Empire
It was Napoleon III who in the end finished the Louvre, thus completing the “Great Design” dreamt of by French kings over the centuries.Napoleon I had already started the construction during the First Empire, building in the Tuileries and hoping to link the edifice to the Louvre palace, but he left it unfinished. As early […]
-
Place, museum or monumentHome of Victor Hugo
It was in October 1832, that the Hugo family moved into this house in the Place Royale, today the Place des Vosges. The writer lived there until the Revolution of 1848. There he wrote an siginificant part of his oeuvre, namely: Les Chants du Crepuscule, 1835; Les Voix Intérieures, 1837; Ruy Blas, 1838; Les Rayons […]
-
Place, museum or monumentMuseum of the Prefecture of Police
Housed in the police station of the fifth arrondissement in Paris, this museum was started by the prefect Louis Lépine, better known from the competition for inventors named after him. This museum, with its manuscripts, prints, portraits, posters and various other exhibits, takes visitors on a journey along the history of the Paris police from […]
-
Place, museum or monumentMuseum of the History of Rueil-Malmaison
The former town hall of Rueil-Malmaison, built in 1868 by the architects Lebois and Prince in imitation of that in Fontainebleau, is now the present home of a museum (inaugurated in 1982) dedicated entirely to the history of the town. Malmaison old town hall was opened by Napoleon III on 1st September, 1869, and on […]
-
Place, museum or monumentIsland of St Helena
A small island lost in the middle of the south Atlantic Ocean, St Helena was chosen by the British government as place to exile the deposed Emperor. “The island of St Helena is the ideal place to lock away such a character. In such a place, so far away, no scheming of any kind will […]
-
Place, museum or monumentHome of Zola
It was at Médan that Zola composed a large portion of Rougon-Macquart, natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire. There he wrote, among others, Nana, Germinal and La Terre (The Earth).Acquired in 1878, thanks to the success of L'Assommoir, the Médan house permitted Zola to associate his name with a geographic […]
-
Place, museum or monumentHôtel de Mondragon
General Bonaparte married 'Josephine' on 9 March, 1796, in Paris at the Mairie of the 2nd arrondissement, in other words the Hôtel Mondragon, the present-day head office of the bank Paribas. And the salon where the ceremony took place has been preserved just as it was on that historic day.The Hôtel de Mondragon was built […]
-
Place, museum or monumentHôtel de Brienne
Built in 1724 by Aubry, the hôtel de Brienne was bought in 1802 by Lucien Bonaparte who had it restored. It was Napoleon’s mother’s residence from 1806 to 1814. Its original decoration has been maintained in several rooms such as the Empire drawing-room and Letizia’s boudoir. Among the Empire collections, a few chairs of Marie […]