The buildings of the General Farm in Paris

Throughout France the General-Farm advertised its presence with imposing offices, factories and warehouses.  In the provinces, it was common to assign to the Farm grand hôtels left vacant by their noble owners; when these were not available for sale, they would be leased.  In Paris the Farmers owned the properties they occupied.  On the eve of Revolution  it is estimated that there were as many as 700 officials and clerks employed in the Farm's central bureaux alone (Dict. des Fermes).   The most important building was the Hôtel des Fermes, rue de Grenelle, which had been acquired  in 1687.  It was here that the assemblies of senior Farmers met, and here also that much of the administration was accommodated.  In course of the century half-a-dozen others premises were added, notably the magnificent Hôtel de Bretonvilliers on the Île Saint-Louis.  The Hôtel de Longueville adjacent to the Louvre was occupied from 1746, by the administration and Paris manufacture of the tobacco monopoly. There was also a splendid salt warehouse, the grenier à sel in the rue Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. 

Nicolas-Jean-Baptiste_Raguenet, The Hôtel de Bretonvilliers, 1757

Assassin's creed - Unity

Released last year, the game Assassin’s Creed Unity, in the Assassin’s Creed series by Unisoft, is set in Paris during the Terror. “Point and click” is about my limit as far as gaming is concerned,  but I love this game's beautiful recreations of Revolutionary Paris.

In search of the Tuileries Palace: the Château de la Punta

Rather bizarrely, the most substantial portion of the ruined Tuileries Palace to survive today is a reconstructed pavilion situated on the remote heights of Ajaccio in Corsica. The Château de La Punta was built for the duc Jérôme Pozzo di Borgo and his son who in 1883 bought a substantial consignment of decorated stones from the demolition contractor Achille Picart  The stones were crated up, taken by train to Marseilles and thence by sea to Corsica.  No doubt, the duc, who was the nephew of Charles-André Pozzo di Borgo, a bitter enemy of the Bonapartes, was gratified to have this echo of Napoleonic splendour transported to his own ancestral lands.  

In search of the Tuileries Palace: Paris

On the night of 23rd May 1871, twelve men under the orders of Jules Bergeret, the former military commander of the Commune, set fire to the Tuileries Palace. The interior, including the library of the Louvre, was completely destroyed, but the outer walls and facades remained intact.  In 1874 the ruined wings of the chateau were demolished, but it was almost eleven years later, in 1882, that the Third Republic finally made the decision to demolish the central pavilion.  The ruin was bought by a private entrepreneur Achille Picart for the relatively modest sum of 33,300 gold francs. In the spirit of the famous Palloy, demolitioner of the Bastille,  Picart salvaged and packaged the stones and marble of the palace for sale as souvenirs.

If the Tuileries was reconstructed..... image by Hubert Naudeix published in Le Figaro

The possibility of rebuilding the palace has never been entirely abandoned.  In 2004 a "National Committee for the reconstruction of the Tuileries" was set up to campaign for the project. Its president, Alain Bourmier, proposed to raise the whopping 300 million Euros needed by international public subscription.  A ministerial commission was set up to study the plans in 2006 but, despite a good deal of public debate, there seems to have been little official enthusiasm.  Since M. Bourmier's death in 2010, the project has been shelved - the most recent discussions I can find on the internet date from 2011.

The Temple - en 3D

Watch the infamous Temple tower rise once more against the skyline of modern Paris!

The Church of St Geneviève .... or not?

Pierre-Antoine Demachy, Cérémonie de la première pierre de la nouvelle église de Ste Geneviève (1765)
Musee Carnavalet  Oil on canvas, 81cm x 129cm 

Among the riches of the Carnavalet is easy to wander past this painting by Pierre-Antoine Demachy, but do a double-take. This is clearly the Panthéon (in its previous incarnation as the Church of St.Geneviève), but where is the dome?  The answer, of course, is that the picture depicts the ceremony, held on 6th September 1764, in which Louis XV laid the first stone - the church had yet to be built!  The facade in the picture was just an enormous and splendid canvas, designed specially for the occasion by the church's architect Soufflot, who also painted  the floor plan of the church on the square and the road leading to it.