Palais de Rohan (ancien archevêché, actuel Hôtel de ville)
PalaceHidden Treasure
Palais de Rohan (ancien archevêché, actuel Hôtel de ville), located in Bordeaux (Gironde), is a Renaissance château built in the 16th century. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- Palace
- Period
- Renaissance (16th century)
- Location
- Bordeaux, Gironde, Nouvelle-Aquitaine
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 44.8379, -0.5794
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00083157
A neoclassical gem from the 18th century, Bordeaux's former archiepiscopal palace now houses the town hall. Decorated with pomp and circumstance, Cabirol's sculptures and Lacour's grisailles make up an interior of rare elegance.
History
In the heart of Bordeaux, facing the chevet of Saint-André cathedral, the Palais Rohan imposes its majestic façade as an architectural manifesto of the Enlightenment. Built between 1771 and 1778 to house the splendours of the archbishopric, this neoclassical palace has endured two and a half centuries of national history without ever losing its superb appearance, accumulating functions like so many prestigious strata: episcopal residence, court, prefecture, imperial palace, then royal castle, before finding its definitive vocation as the Town Hall in 1835. What sets the Palais Rohan apart from other French town halls is the extraordinary quality of its surviving interior decor. The sculptor Cabirol carved fine Baroque panelling tempered by neoclassical taste, while the painter Pierre Lacour covered the walls of the dining room with illusionist grisailles reminiscent of the great Roman decorators. Two fires - in 1862 and 1870 - could have wiped out this heritage, but they only partially reconfigured the interior layout, sparing the essential elements of a setting designed to dazzle. To visit the Palais Rohan is to stroll through a space where the representation of power successively took on the clothes of the Church, the Republic, the Empire and the Monarchy. Each room bears the traces of these metamorphoses, offering the attentive visitor a veritable political soap opera engraved in stone and stucco. The grand salon, with its carved panelling, invites visitors to imagine the banquets and receptions that were held here under the Ancien Régime. The palace also opens onto a formal garden, whose park-side façade features a pediment sculpted by Cabirol, which is more intimate and ornamental than the main façade. This leafy setting, right in the heart of the historic district that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, provides a precious breathing space and an ideal vantage point from which to photograph the architecture of 18th-century Bordeaux.
Architecture
The Palais Rohan is part of the neoclassical movement that characterised Bordeaux's great 18th-century architecture, contemporary with the monumental ensembles of the Place de la Bourse and the Allée de Tourny. Its sober, well-balanced main facade features a rigorous arrangement of pilasters, pedimented windows and arcades, reflecting the influence of Palladio's treatises filtered through French classicism. The ashlar limestone, quarried in the Gironde, gives the building its characteristic blond hue, which glows in the setting sun with an almost Mediterranean warmth. The more ornamental garden façade is the work of the sculptor Cabirol, who in 1781 produced a finely sculpted pediment combining allegories and plant motifs in a style still tinged with the Rococo spirit. Inside, the grand salon is the centrepiece of the palace, with its panelling carved by the same Cabirol, a masterfully elegant composition in which gilded panels alternate with mirrors in a row to multiply space and light. The dining room retains the grisaille decoration created by Pierre Lacour between 1783 and 1784: this monochrome trompe-l'œil, imitating antique bas-reliefs and drapery in shades of grey, is a rare example of neoclassical decorative painting in Aquitaine. The palace is laid out in a classical U-shape, around a main courtyard that structures the circulation and reception areas. Despite the changes made in the 19th century following the two fires, the sequence of ceremonial rooms is still legible enough to reveal the original decorative ambition: a palace conceived as a permanent stage of power, where every material and every ornament is part of a total representation.
Related Figures
Ferdinand-Maximilien Mériadec de Rohan — archevêque de Bordeaux commanditaire du palais (1769-1781)Étienne — architecte co-concepteur du palais (1771-1778)Bonfin — architecte co-concepteur du palais (1771-1778)Cabirol — sculpteur auteur des lambris du grand salon et du fronton du jardin (à partir de 1781)Pierre Lacour — peintre auteur du décor en grisaille de la salle à manger (1783-1784)Napoléon Ier — élève le palais au rang de palais impérial lors de son passage à Bordeaux (1808)Louis XVIII — rebaptise le lieu château royal sous la Restauration (1815)
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Palais de Rohan (ancien archevêché, actuel Hôtel de ville) located?
Palais de Rohan (ancien archevêché, actuel Hôtel de ville) is located in Bordeaux, Gironde department, Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, France.
When was Palais de Rohan (ancien archevêché, actuel Hôtel de ville) built?
Palais de Rohan (ancien archevêché, actuel Hôtel de ville) dates back to a period built during the Renaissance (16th century).
Is Palais de Rohan (ancien archevêché, actuel Hôtel de ville) open to visitors?
Palais de Rohan (ancien archevêché, actuel Hôtel de ville) is currently closed to visitors.