Places, museums, monuments : 61
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Place, museum or monumentChurch of Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul
Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul, the ninth-century parish church of Rueil-Malmaison, is the final resting place of the Empress Josephine and her daughter, Queen Hortense. The building itself however was altered many times over the centuries before its final restoration by Napoleon III in 1857. Josephine died in Malmaison on 29th May, 1814, and was buried four days later […]
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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 […]
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Place, museum or monumentLouvre Museum, First Empire
The Louvre can never be a comfortable residence. I regard it as a kind of ceremonial palace in which we must store all our riches in the field of art and science, such as statues, bronze sculptures, paintings, books, archives, medals… Napoleon I. In 1803, ten years after it was created, the Louvre was rebaptized the […]
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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 […]
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Place, museum or monumentHome of Chateaubriand – La Vallée-aux-Loups
Following his article against Napoleon which had appeared in the Mercure in 1807, Chateaubriand, victim of imperial censorship, was forced to move out of at least two houses in Paris. However, thanks to the success of his earlier publications, Atala and Le Génie du Christianisme, he was able to afford a modest property located in […]
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Place, museum or monumentHome of Balzac
Honoré de Balzac lived in this house from 1840 to 1847. Of the eleven Parisian residences of the writer, it is the only one which exists today. This house is also a witness to that which made the village of Passy during the last century: a place of holiday for city dwellers yearning for the […]
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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 […]
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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 […]