Élysée Palace

Paris - La Belle Époque

The Élysée Palace (French: Palais de l'Élysée, pronounced [palɛ d(ə) lelize]) is the official residence of the president of France in Paris. Completed in 1722, it was built for Louis Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, a nobleman and army officer who had been appointed governor of Île-de-France in 1719. It is located on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in the 8th Arrondissement, near the Champs-Élysées. The name Élysée derives from the Elysian Fields, the place of the blessed dead in Greek mythology.

The Élysée Palace has been the home of personalities such as Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764), Nicolas Beaujon (1718–1786), Bathilde d'Orléans (1750–1822), Joachim Murat (1767–1815), and Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry (1778–1820). On 12 December 1848, under the Second Republic, the French Parliament passed a law declaring the building the official residence of the French president. The Élysée Palace, which contains the presidential office and residency, is also the meeting place of the Council of Ministers, the weekly meeting of the Government of France that is presided over by the president of the Republic. Across the street is the Hôtel de Marigny, which has served as a state guest house where the French government has hosted visiting dignitaries.

History

The architect Armand-Claude Mollet possessed a property fronting on the road to the village of Roule, west of Paris (now the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré), and backing onto royal property, the Grand Cours through the Champs-Élysées. He sold this in 1718 to Louis Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, Count of Évreux, with the agreement that Mollet would construct an hôtel particulier for the count, fronted by an entrance court and backed by a garden. The Hôtel d'Évreux was finished and decorated by 1722, and though it has undergone many modifications since, it remains a fine example of the French neo-classical style. At the time of his death in 1753, Évreux was the owner of one of the most widely admired houses in Paris, and it was bought by the Marquise de Pompadour on 24 December 1753 for 730,000 livres. Opponents showed their distaste for the regime by hanging signs on the gates that read: "Home of the King's whore". After her death, it was left in her will to the crown.

In 1773, it was purchased by Nicolas Beaujon, banker to the court and one of the richest men in France, who needed a suitably sumptuous "country house" (for the city of Paris did not yet extend this far) to house his fabulous collection of great masters paintings. To this end, he hired the architect Étienne-Louis Boullée to make substantial alterations to the buildings (as well as design an English-style garden). Soon on display there were such well-known masterpieces as Holbein's The Ambassadors (now in the National Gallery in London), and Frans Hals' Bohemian (now at the Louvre). His architectural alterations and art galleries gave this residence international renown as "one of the premier houses of Paris".

Royal and imperial palace

The palace and gardens were purchased from Beaujon by Bathilde d'Orléans, Duchess of Bourbon in 1787 for 1,300,000 livres. It was the Duchess who named it the Élysée. She also built a group of cottages in the gardens which she named the Hameau de Chantilly, after the Hameau at her father-in-law's Château de Chantilly. With the French Revolution, the Duchess fled the country and the Élysée was confiscated and leased out. The gardens were used for eating, drinking, and dancing, under the name Hameau de Chantilly, and the rooms became gambling houses.

The Élysée was sold in 1805 to Joachim and Caroline Murat, who administered major renovations that made the building more grand and "imperial".[7] Later, the house was transferred to Caroline's brother, Emperor Napoleon, in 1808; it became known as the Élysée-Napoléon. After the Battle of Waterloo, Napoléon returned to the Élysée and signed his abdication there on 22 June 1815. He left the Élysée three days later.

Russian Cossacks camped at the Élysée when they occupied Paris in 1814. The property was then returned to its previous owner, the Duchesse de Bourbon, who then sold it to her royal cousin, Louis XVIII, in 1816. Between 1820 and 1848, the palace was primarily used to host guests of the royal family.

Presidential residence

Following the French Revolution of 1848 and the abdication of Louis Philippe I, the provisional government of the Second Republic took over the palace. It was initially used to host musical performances and lectures before being renamed the Élysée National and designated as the official residence of the president of the Republic under the administration of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. The president also has the use of other official residences, including the Château de Rambouillet, forty-five kilometres southwest of Paris, as well as the Fort de Brégançon near Toulon.

In 1853, following his coup d'état that ended the Second Republic, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, now Napoleon III, tasked architect Joseph-Eugène Lacroix [fr] with renovations; meanwhile he moved to the nearby Tuileries Palace, but kept the Élysée as a discreet place to meet his mistresses, moving between the two palaces through a secret underground passage that has since been demolished. Since Lacroix completed his work in 1867, the essential look of the Palais de l'Élysée has remained the same.

In 1873, under the Third Republic, the Élysée became the official presidential residence. In 1899, Félix Faure became the only officeholder to die in the palace.