HISTORICAL INFORMATIONS ABOUT THE PRINCIPAL BUILDINGS BURNT
The Palais Royal, built on the site of Cardinal Richelieu's Palace, faces the Louvre, and adjoins the Place des Victoires. Given by Louis XIV, to his brother the Duke of Orleans, it passed from him to the Regent Duke. Here, but not in the existing edifice, the Regent and his daughter held their incredible orgies; here lived his grandson Egalité, who rebuilt the palace after a fire, and relieved his embarrassments by erecting the ranges of shops. The Palais Royal Gardens were the nursery of the First Revolution; they were the favourite resort of Camille Desmoulins and the other mob orators not yet sitting in Convention; and in them was unfurled, on the 13th of July, 1789, that tricolour flag which was to prove even a deadlier symbol than the red and white roses plucked once for England's woe in our own Temple-gardens. At the Palais Royal Egalité hatched the plots which ended in his execution, when it was disposed of by lottery, to be bought back, repaired, and beautified by the Orleans family after the Restoration, and inhabited by them till the second death of the Monarchy, in 1830, removed them to the Tuileries. In 1848 the palace was plundered and the interior destroyed by the mob, who at the same time burnt Louis Philippe's fine library. The Palais was turned into a barrack, but when the new Republic developed into an Empire, it naturally changed back again into a palace. The Emperor made it over to his uncle Jerome, who left it to Prince Napoleon, by whom it was fitted up in sumptuous style. The great staircase and its balustrades and the Galerie des Fêtes were fine in art and in general effect, but nothing that may have been destroyed can be half so great a loss as the Library which went in 1848, or as the Hôtel de Ville, a magnificent structure, dating in part from 1628. The additions of 1842 to this municipal palace cost 640,000l., and some of the saloons were the most gorgeous in Paris, perhaps in the world. Here in the days gone by, the Prefect of the Seine was wont to entertain his 7,000 guests in the great gallery, with its gilt Corinthian columns and 3,000 wax lights, the whole suite of rooms measuring more than 1,000 yards in length. In and about the building were some 500 statues of French celebrities, from Charlemagne to Louis XIV, in a full-bottomed wig. Painting, gilding, carving, glass, and velvet here had done their utmost, and as a specimen of magnificence in the modern French taste the furniture and decorations of the Hôtel de Ville were unrivalled. The building, however, was far from depending altogether on its sumptuous upholstery. Not only was the architecture worthy of all praise and the art of much of the decoration as intrinsic as its gold, but here had been enacted many famous and infamous scenes in the history of Paris. Here the first Commune held its bloody sittings; here Robespierre took refuge with his partisans, and was found by the soldiers with his broken jaw; the "Citizen King" was presented here to the people by Lafayette from a central window; here the soldiers were quartered in 1848; and here in 1871 was the stronghold of the last Commune, less bloody in its life but more desperate in its death than the first.
The Palais de Justice is a vast pile, which includes the Sainte Chapelle, numerous courts of law, and the Prison of the Conciergerie. Anciently the site of palaces inhabited by the Kings down to Francis I., afterwards the meeting place of the Parliaments of Paris, it has been repaired and rebuilt since 1831 at a cost of nearly 1,000,000l. The courts of law open from the vast but inelegant Salle des Pas Perdus, which answers to our Westminster-hall. One of these courts was the Chamber of the Tribunal Revolutionnaire, and communicated by a small door with the Conciergerie Prison. In the precincts of the Palais stands, or stood, the Sainte Chapelle, an exquisite specimen on a small scale of the best style of Gothic architecture. The Chapelle was finished in 1248, having been built by Pierre de Montereau to enshrine the thorns of our Lord's crown and the wood of the Cross, relics bought for an immense sum from the Emperor Baldwin by St. Louis, and carried through the streets of Paris by the King barefoot. In 1791 the Sainte Chapelle became a club, then a corn store, then a record office; Louis Philippe commenced its restoration, and up to the fall of the Empire about 2,000,000f. had been spent upon it. It is in two stories, corresponding with the floors of the ancient palace; the lower chapel, or crypt, was intended for the servants, the upper, on a level with the Royal apartments, for the Royal family. The glass is exquisite, and the statues of the twelve Apostles date from the 13th century, and are admirable specimens of the art of their age. A small square hole to the south of the nave communicates with a room in which Louis XI was wont to sit and hear mass without fear of assassination.
GRAND-HOTEL
12, Boulevard des Capucines, 12.
REOPENING
After entire restoration.