Historic buildings : $b as seen and described by great writers
History
Historic buildings : $b as seen and described by great writers
Architecture -- History; Art -- Study and teaching; Historic buildings
It was at the Luxembourg that (December 10, 1797), Bonaparte presented
the treaty of the peace of Campo Formio to the Directory, after
returning from his first campaign in Italy. At the end of 1799, the
palace became for a time _Le Palais du Consulat_: _Le Palais du
Sénat_, then _de la Pairie_. Marshal Ney was condemned to death
here, under the Restoration (November 21, 1815), and was executed in
the Allée de l’Observatoire, at the end of the garden on December 7.
The iron wicket still remains in the door of his prison, opening west
at the end of the great gallery of archives. The ministers of Charles
X. were also judged at the Luxembourg, and Fieschi and the other
conspirators of July, 1835, were condemned here; as was Prince Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte, after the attempt at Bologne in 1840.
The Luxembourg is only shown when the Senate is not sitting. The
apartments best worth seeing are the Chapel of 1844, decorated with
modern paintings; and _the Ancienne Salle du Livre d’or_, where
the titles and arms of peers were preserved under the Restoration and
Louis Philippe, adorned with the decorations of the apartment of Marie
de’ Medici. The ceiling of the gallery, which forms part of the hall,
represents the Apotheosis of Marie. The arabesques in the principal
hall are attributed to Giovanni da Udine: the ceiling represents
Marie de’ Medici reestablishing the peace and unity of France. The
first floor is reached by a great staircase which occupies the place
of a gallery once filled with the twenty-four great pictures of the
life of the Regent Marie by Rubens, now in the Louvre. The oratory of
the queen and another room are now united to form the _Salle des
Gardes_, her bedroom is the _Salle des Messagers d’état_ and
her reception-room is known as the _Salon de Napoléon I_. The
cupola of the _Salle du Trône_ by Alaux represents the Apotheosis
of the first Emperor.
The _Hôtel du Petit Luxembourg_ is a dependency of the greater
palace, and was erected about the same time by Richelieu, who resided
here till the Palais Royal was built. When he moved thither, he gave
this palace to his niece, the Duchesse d’Aiguillon, from whom it
passed to Henri Jules de Bourbon-Condé, after which it received the
name of _Petit Bourbon_. Anne, Palatine of Bavaria, lived here,
and added a hôtel towards the Rue Vaugirard to accommodate her suite.
Under the First Empire the Luxembourg was occupied for some time by
Joseph Bonaparte. It is now the official residence of the President
of the Senate. The cloister of the former convent of the _Filles du
Calvaire_, whom Marie de Medici established near her palace, is now
a winter garden attached to the Petit Luxembourg. The chapel, standing
close to the grill of the Rue de Vaugirard, is an admirable specimen
of the end of the Sixteenth Century; on the summit of its gable is a
symbolical Pelican nourishing its young.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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