Imprimer

The Hôtel de Soubise and the Hôtel de Rohan

In 1371, Olivier de Clisson, the successor to the Constable of France Bertrand du Guesclin, started work on building a house in the heart of the Temple district, the present-day Marais, which was being developed at the time. All that remains of this original dwelling is the fortified entrance flanked by two bartizans on what is now the rue des Archives. This is the final trace of 14th-century private architecture still visible in Paris today.
Cour d'honneur de l'hôtel de Soubise
In 1553 François de Lorraine, Duc de Guise, and his wife Anne d'Este bought the property. The building was in a very poor state of repair, and the powerful de Guise family entrusted the major rebuilding works to the famous Italian artist Francesco Primitaccio, leader of the First School of Fontainebleau. Unfortunately nothing remains of the famous chapel paintings by Niccolo dell'Abbate based on his drawings.Under the influence of the Duc de Guise the house became the headquarters of the Catholic League during the Wars of Religion. This was the setting for events which marked the history of France: the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572 was probably planned here, as was the Day of the Barricades in 1588 which forced King Henri III to leave Paris.

In the second half of the 17th century the last member of the House of Guise, Marie de Lorraine, carried out considerable embellishments to the house and gardens.It became home to a brilliant court regularly attended by Corneille, Tristan L'Hermite, and the composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier.

Le chantier de l'hôtel de Rohan en images... par Archives_nationales_Fr

Des travaux de confortation et de remise en état de la façade sur jardin sont entrepris en 2016 sous la maitrise d'œuvre de l'architecte en chef des monuments historiques François Jeanneau. Les travaux consistent à :
- reprendre l'ensemble des maçonnerie (remplacement des pierres en œuvres les plus abimées, purges des ciments de ragréage, nettoyage de la pierre par hydrogomage, restitution des éléments sculptés altérés, comme certains métopes, ou disparus comme les pots à feu et la frise d'acrotère,
- remplacer les menuiseries des années 20 altérées, par des menuiseries conformes au dessin d'origine et offrant les performances actuelles d'isolation et de protection aux UV
- assurer la stabilité de l'édifice par des reprises en sous-œuvre
Ces travaux s'achèveront à l'été 2017. L'hôtel accueillera au rez-de-chaussée les décors de la chancellerie d'Orléans en cours de restauration pour une ouverture au public prévue en 2021.

In March 1700 the property was bought by François de Rohan-Soubise and his wife Anne de Rohan-Chabot, who commissioned their young architect, Pierre-Alexis Delamair, to modernise it in line with contemporary tastes. He decided to change the building's aspect by adding a new facade in the classical style against the old South wing, and building a majestic court of honour with a semi-circular portico giving onto the rue des Francs-Bourgeois on the site where the Guises' manège had once been.At the same time, their son, the future Cardinal de Rohan, commissioned Delamair to build the Hôtel de Rohan-Strasbourg, whose monumental facade overlooks the communal gardens of the two properties.

The remarriage, in 1732, of Hercule Mériadec, older son of François de Soubise, to the young Princess Marie-Sophie de Courcillon in 1732, a different architect, Germain Boffrand, was put in charge of creating the apartments. In 1735, Boffrand built a new, oval pavilion perpendicularly linked to the north wing and providing access to the private apartments of the Crown Prince and his wife. From 1736, he turned his attention to the interior decor. These apartments are one of the finest examples of rocaille art, and are a collective masterpiece produced by the best painters, sculptors, and ornamentists of the period, including François Boucher, Charles-Joseph Natoire, Jean-Baptiste II Lemoyne, and Jacques Verbeckt, all of whom worked on this project with Boffrand.

During the French Revolution, the Hôtel de Soubise was sequestrated then finally sold to pay the Soubise family's creditors, as had already been the case with the neighbouring Hôtel de Rohan. The State acquired it by an Imperial decree of 6 March 1808, and it was officially assigned to the Archives de l'Empire. The Hôtel de Rohan was assigned to the Imprimerie Nationale on the same occasion.Napoleon I had the archives that had hitherto been held in various depositories around Paris grouped together and housed in the former Hôtel de Soubise. But the facilities were provisional and ill-suited to this purpose, and space soon ran out, meaning the authorities had to commence an ad hoc depository building programme.

This building programme, now known collectively as the 'Grands Dépots', ran from the July Monarchy to the Third Republic in two phases - the first from 1838 to 1848 was conducted by the architects Édouard Dubois and Charles Lelong, while the second, from 1859 to 1880, was the work of Hubert Janniard and later Edmond Guillaume. The first buildings, the 'Louis-Philippe Dépôts', extended the Hôtel de Soubise to the east, running across the gardens and breaking up the perspective with the facade of the Hôtel de Rohan. The wing built under Napoleon III and completed during the Third Republic, where the buildings of the de Guise residence had once stood, is at right angles to the Louis-Philippe Dépôts and runs along what are now the rue des Quatre-Fils and rue des Archives. The courtyard of the Grands Dépôts is thus an enclosed a T-shape in which the architecture of the Soubise palace is now in dialogue with that of the monumental Archives Nationales stacks. In 1867, when the archives had been moved out and the rooms restored, the Archives Nationales Museum was installed in the state drawing rooms.

In 1927, the Imprimerie Nationale vacated the Hôtel de Rohan, which was now assigned to the Archives Nationales along with its outbuildings. The Cardinal de Rohan's former stables, opening onto the Horses of the Sun courtyard, were turned into archive stacks to house the documents of the central deeds office of Parisian notaries. The main building was entirely renovated by the architect Robert Danis between 1932 and 1938. The grand staircase, which had been demolished in 1824, was reinstated, the drawing room and famous Cabinet des Singes were restored, whilst the Cabinet des Fables was transferred here from a demolished wing of the Hôtel de Soubise.The Hôtel de Rohan is currently closed to visitors as it is undergoing major work to install decoration from the Chancellerie d'Orléans. It will reopen to the public in 2018.

It will reopen to the public in 2018.See the virtual tour {Fla}

For further information

Régis Lapasin, Sabine Meuleau, Archives nationales. Le quadrilatère du Marais, Paris, 2013, coll. Itinéraires du patrimoine.
Claire Béchu (dir.), Les Archives nationales. Des lieux pour l'histoire de France. Bicentenaire d'une installation, 1808-2008, Paris, Archives nationales-Éditions Somogy, 2008, 384 pages with illustrations. On sale at the Archives Nationales.