Week 16

Tuesday: May 18

Place des Vosges / Victor Hugo's House / Hotel Sully

Wow, a real treat today; three great things to see. Place des Vosges is the "heart" of the Marais. A beautiful square that is arguably the oldest planned square in Paris. Fascinating.....and just awsome! In one corner of the square at #6 is Victor Hugo's house. the lived her for 16 years and wrote many of his famous works, including much of Les Miserables. And through a door in another corner, you can enter the back of the Hotel Sully (remember, hotel mean city house). The Garden is just magnificant and you can go there, relax, and enjoy the solitude. The Hotel is also magnificant, but you can't take pictures inside (I don't know why they have these silly rules is some places and not in others) so I'll only show you the outside...but that is pretty good! Hope you enjoy.

Place des Vosges

The Place des Vosges is the oldest planned square in Paris. It is located in the Marais district, and it straddles the dividing-line between the 3rd and 4th arrondissements of Paris.

Originally known as the Place Royale, the Place des Vosges was built by Henri IV from 1605 to 1612. A true square (140 m x 140 m), it embodied the first European program of royal city planning. It was built on the site of the Hôtel des Tournelles and its gardens: at a tournament at the Tournelles, a royal residence, Henri II was wounded and died. Catherine de Medicis had the Gothic pile demolished, and she removed to the Louvre.

The Place des Vosges, inaugurated in 1612 with a grand carrousel to celebrate the wedding of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, is the prototype of all the residential squares of European cities that were to come. What was new about the Place Royale in 1612 was that the housefronts were all built to the same design, probably by Baptiste du Cerceau, of red brick with strips of stone quoins over vaulted arcades that stand on square pillars. The steeply-pitched blue slate roofs are pierced with discreet small-paned dormers above the pedimented dormers that stand upon the cornices. Only the north range was built with the vaulted ceilings that the "galleries" were meant to have. Two pavilions that rise higher than the unified roofline of the square center the north and south faces and offer access to the square through triple arches. Though they are designated the Pavilion of the King and of the Queen, no royal personage has ever lived in the aristocratic square. The Place des Vosges initiated subsequent developments of Paris that created a suitable urban background for the French aristocracy.

Before the square was completed, Henri IV ordered the Place Dauphine to be laid out. Within a mere five-year period the king oversaw an unmatched building scheme for the ravaged medieval city: additions to the Louvre, the Pont Neuf, and the Hôpital Saint Louis as well as the two royal squares.

Cardinal Richelieu had an equestrian bronze of Louis XIII erected in the center (there were no garden plots until 1680). The original was melted down in the Revolution; the present version, begun in 1818 by Louis Dupaty and completed by Jean-Pierre Cortot, replaced it in 1825. The square was renamed in 1799 when the département of the Vosges became the first to pay taxes supporting a campaign of the Revolutionary army. The Restoration returned the old royal name, but the short-lived Second Republic restored the revolutionary one in 1848.

Among the many celebrities who made their homes here was Victor Hugo; his house, at no. 6, where he wrote much of Les Misérables, is now a museum, the Maison de Victor Hugo; M° Chemin-Vert/Bastille), in which a whole room is devoted to posters of its various stage adaptations. Hugo was extraordinarily multi-talented: as well as writing, he drew and designed his own furniture; he even put together the extraordinary Chinese-style dining room on display here.

From the southwest corner of the place, a door leads through to the formal Château garden, orangerie and exquisite Renaissance facade of the Hôtel de Sully. The garden, with its park benches, makes for a peaceful rest-stop, or you can pass through the building, nodding at the sphinxes on the stairs, as a pleasing short cut to rue St-Antoine.

Today the square is planted with a bosquet of mature lindens set in grass and gravel, surrounded by clipped lindens.

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Victor Hugo's House (Les Miserables)

The City of Paris preserves the two houses where Victor Hugo lived the longest: the Hôtel de Rohan-Guéménée in Place des Vosges in Paris, where for 16 years (from 1832 to 1848) he rented a 280 square-metre apartment on the second floor, and Hauteville House on the island of Guernsey, where he lived in exile for 15 years (from 1856 to 1870).

Victor Hugo was 30 when he moved into the Hôtel de Rohan-Guéménée with his wife Adèle and their four children, Léopoldine, Charles, François-Victor and Adèle. By this time he had already triumphed with his play 'Hernani' and enjoyed widespread success with his great novel 'Notre-Dame de Paris'. In the rooms overlooking Place Royale (today Place des Vosges) he would receive visits from Vigny, Lamartine, Béranger, Sainte-Beuve, Dumas, Mérimée, the Devéria brothers, Nanteuil and David d’Angers. It is in this apartment that he wrote some of his major works ('Marie Tudor', 'Ruy Blas', 'Les Burgraves', 'Les Chants du Crépuscule', 'Les Voix intérieures', 'Les Rayons et les ombres'…), along with much of 'Les Misérables', the beginning of 'La Légende des siècles' and part of Contemplations. During this period he became a member of the Académie Française, a peer of France and a member of Parliament; he met Juliette Drouet and married his daughter Léopoldine to Charles Vacquerie.

In 1851 the banned poet left France for an exile which would last 19 years.

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Hôtel de Sully

The Hôtel de Sully is a hôtel particulier, or private mansion, in the Louis XIII style, located in the Le Marais, IV arondissement, Paris. It is located at 62 rue Saint-Antoine; however, from a corner of the Place des Vosges you can go through a door into the back gardens of the Hotel Sully. a nice tranquil spot to grab a rest.

The financier Mesme Gallet built the hôtel, with gardens and an orangery, between 1625 and 1630. The building was designed by the architect Jean Androuet du Cerceau. The site was chosen to give access to the Place Royale - today the Place des Vosges - and was located in the Marais, at the time a fashionable district of Paris.

Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully, former Superintendent of Finances to King Henri IV, purchased it on 23 February 1634. He completed the decoration of the hôtel, and spent his last years living there. His grandson Maximilien commissioned the architect François Le Vau, son of Louis Le Vau, to build an additional wing in 1660, to the west of the garden. The Hôtel de Sully still bears the name of this family, who owned the building into the 18th century.

The hôtel then passed through the hands of various owners, becoming an investment property in the 19th century. Various additions and alterations were made, to accommodate trades, craftsmen and other tenants. In 1862 it was classified as a monument historique, and new owners, more concerned with conservation, gradually restored the building. It became a state-owned property in 1944. A long restoration programme was then undertaken, which was completed with the repair of the Orangery in 1973.

Since 1967 it has been the home of the Caisse nationale des monuments historiques et des sites, which in 2000 became the Centre des monuments nationaux. This public body, under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture and Communication, is responsible for the management of historic buildings and monuments in state care.

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