Palais-Royal Audio Guide

Palais-Royal: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Palais-Royal

   Welcome to the Palais-Royal, one of the most layered places in the center of Paris. It stands just north of the Louvre, and its story begins on the old rue Saint-Honoré. Look around and you will see a palace, a courtyard, a garden, and long arcades lined with boutiques, cafés and galleries, all gathered into one calm enclosure. The name sounds grand, and the history lives up to it. This was a cardinal's residence, a royal home, a revolutionary stage and a Parisian meeting place. Today it houses some of the most important institutions of the French state. Yet the garden and arcades remain open for strolling, so you can walk through four centuries of Paris in a few quiet minutes. Over the next few stops, we will follow the palace from its beginnings under Cardinal Richelieu, through royal danger and revolutionary fever, to the striped columns and polished spheres that make it feel strikingly contemporary. Let's begin where the story does, with a very ambitious churchman who wanted to live close to the king.

2. 02

   A Cardinal Builds Himself a Palace

   In 1624, Armand du Plessis, better known as Cardinal Richelieu, was named head of the council of King Louis the Thirteenth. That same year he bought the Hôtel de Rambouillet on rue Saint-Honoré, north of the Louvre, so that he could live near the king. It was a practical move, but Richelieu was not a man for small gestures. The following year he bought the plots of land bordering the house. From 1633 he launched a campaign of acquisitions that stopped only with his death. The architect Jacques Lemercier transformed the original building into a palace, and around it grew a new neighborhood between today's rue de Richelieu, rue des Petits-Champs, rue des Bons-Enfants and rue Saint-Honoré. In other words, a single house grew into a whole piece of the city. Richelieu also loved the theater. He had a performance hall built in the south-east wing of his palace. That detail still echoes today, because theater remains part of the character of this place, with the Comédie-Française and the Théâtre du Palais-Royal among the stages linked to it. When Richelieu died in 1642, he left the palace to Louis the Thirteenth, who died the following year.

3. 03

   A Young King, a Night Escape and a Revolution

   After the king's death, Anne of Austria, the new regent, moved into the palace with her two young sons, the future Louis the Fourteenth and Philippe d'Orléans. It should have been a safe royal home. Then came the Fronde, a revolt led by magistrates of the Parliament of Paris who wanted to impose a more moderate monarchy. In the night of the fifth of January 1649, Anne had to leave in great haste and take refuge at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. During those turbulent events, the people of Paris even entered the palace to see the young king. Louis the Fourteenth found this humiliation hard to bear and never forgot that he once had to flee. A century and a half later, the palace was at the center of another upheaval. In 1789, it was one of the great gathering places of revolutionary Paris. On the twelfth of July, Camille Desmoulins called for revolution from the garden. In 1792, the Orléans prince who then owned the palace was elected a deputy of Paris at the Convention and took the name Philippe Égalité, meaning Philip Equality. A name like that tells you how far the palace's fortunes had traveled from Richelieu's day.

4. 04

   Arcades, Gardens and a Very Modern Courtyard

   The Palais-Royal you see today owes its overall shape to Louis Philippe Joseph d'Orléans. He is the reason Parisians inherited one of their loveliest public gardens. Around it rose the arcades, and with them came something new. In a city where streets were dirty and dangerous and pavements were almost absent, the covered gallery offered a safe place to window shop and socialize. Historians of architecture see in it the start of what Bertrand Lemoine calls the Arcade Era, which transformed European shopping habits between 1786 and 1935. Behind those façades, life was lively. There were shops, workshops and cafés, and the palace became a central place of public life. The wooden galleries, known as the Galeries de Bois, became popular meeting spots. Now step into the courtyard and meet the twentieth century. Daniel Buren's 260 octagonal columns, striped in black and white, have become one of the symbols of Paris. Polished spheres reflect the arcades around them. And a work by the Dutch artist Jan Dibbets, commissioned in 1994 and called Homage to Arago, honors the mathematician François Arago, who conceived the Paris meridian. Look down as you walk, because the line passes through this courtyard.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   The Palais-Royal has survived a great deal. After the Orléans family returned in 1814, the palace passed through more changes of regime. On the twenty-fourth of May 1871, in the final days of the Paris Commune, it was set on fire by the Communards, who saw it as a symbol of aristocracy. It suffered less damage than other government buildings, and it later became home to state institutions. Today it houses the Conseil d'État, the Constitutional Council and the Ministry of Culture. Those institutions work behind the façades, while the garden and galleries remain a place for ordinary walkers, with boutiques, cafés and galleries tucked into the arcades. Before you leave, slow down and listen. Footsteps echo under the arcades, there is the smell of coffee from nearby cafés, sunlight falls on the balustrades and fountains murmur in the garden. Notice how the stripes of the columns play against the old stone, and how the courtyard, the garden and the galleries each seem to belong to a different century. Then ask yourself which of those centuries you would most like to have walked through.