Hôtel de Soubise

The Hôtel de Soubise is a city mansion "entre cour et jardin", located at 60 rue des Francs-Bourgeois, in the IIIe arrondissement of Paris.

The Hôtel de Soubise was built for the Prince and Princess de Soubise on the site of a manor house built in 1375. On March 27, 1700, François de Rohan, prince de Soubise bought the Hôtel de Clisson and asked the architect Pierre-Alexis Delamair to remodel it completely. Works started in 1704.

Interiors by Germain Boffrand, created about 1735-40 and partly dismantled, are accounted among the high points of the rococo style in France (Kimball 1943: 178). They constituted the new apartments of the Prince on the ground floor and the Princesse on the "piano nobile", both of which featured oval salons looking into the garden. These rooms that have changed very little since the 18th century, including the "Chambre du prince", "Salon ovale du prince", "Chambre d'apparat de la princesse", an amusing "Cabinet des singes" (Monkey Cabinet), and the very fine "Salon ovale de la princesse" with gilded carvings and mirror-glass embedded in the "boiserie" and ceiling canvases and overdoors by François Boucher, Charles-Joseph Natoire, and Carle Van Loo.

Since a Napoleonic decree of 1808, this residence has become the property of the State. Nowadays it hosts the Musée de l'Histoire de France (Museum of French History) and a part of the French National Archives.

External links

* [http://www.marais.biz/contenu/hotel_de_soubise/hotel_de_soubise.htm Website about the building]
* [http://www.insecula.com/us/musee/M0121.html insecula.com entry]

References

*Fiske Kimball, 1943. "The Creation of the Rococo" (Philadelphia Museum of art)