Palais du Luxembourg
The Palais du Luxembourg has been called an imitation of the Pitti Palace at Florence, but, beyond the fact that it was an Italian conception of Marie de Médici's, it is difficult to follow the suggestion, as the architect, Jacques Debrosse, one of the ablest of Frenchmen in his line, simply carried out the work on the general plan of the time of its building, the early seventeenth century.
Its three not very extensive pavilions are joined together by a colonnade which encloses a rather foreboding flagged courtyard, a conception, or elaboration, of the original edifice by Chalgrin, in 1804, under the orders of Napoleon. The garden front, though a restoration of Louis Philippe, is more in keeping with the original Médici plan; that, at any rate, is to its credit.
To-day the Luxembourg, the Republican Palais du Sénat, is but an echo of the four centuries of aristocratic existence which upheld the name and fame of its first proprietor, the Duc de Piney-Luxembourg, Prince de Tigry, who built it in the sixteenth century. From 1733 to 1736 the palace underwent important restorations and the last persons to inhabit it before the Revolution were the Duchesse de Brunswick, the Queen Dowager of Spain and the Comte de Provence, brother of Louis XVI, to whom it had been given by Letters Patent in 1779.
In 1791 the Convention thought so little of it that they made it a prison, and a few years later it was called again the Palais du Directoire, and, before the end of the century, the Palais du Consulat. This was but a brief glory, as Napoleon transferred his residence in accordance with his augmenting ambitions, to the Tuileries in the following year.
By 1870 the edifice had become known as the Palais du Sénat, then as the headquarters of the Préfecture of the Seine, and finally, as to-day, the Palais du Luxembourg, the seat of the French Senate and the residence of the president of that body.
The principal public apartments are the Library, the "Salle des Séances," the "Buvette"—formerly Napoleon's "Cabinet de Travail," the "Salle des Pas Perdus"—formerly the "Salle du Trone," the Grand Gallery and the apartments of Marie de Médici. The chapel is modern and dates only from 1844.