Hôtel de Soubise

In the 16th century, the Italian-born architect Sebastiano Serlio designed a new style of urban residence for the French aristocracy. Less grand than a palace, but larger and more extravagant than a typical luxury urban home, homes of the style came to be called “hôtel particuliers.”

Unlike typical city homes, which were rowhouses that shared walls with the homes on either side of them and fronted directly onto the street, a hôtel particulier was freestanding, and was usually set back from the street by a corps de logis, a central courtyard between the house and the street. Hôtel particuliers usually also have gardens behind them, not visible from the street. Usually grand in scale, the homes were designed to include stables, carriage houses, and quarters for extensive staff. Popular with the very wealthy, hundreds of hôtel particuliers were built throughout France and there are today about 500 of them in Paris alone, although many of them have now been converted into hotels, museums, or apartments.

The photo is of the Hôtel de Soubise in the Marais District of Paris. At the direction of Napoleon, the home was purchased by the state from the Soubise family in 1808 and made a repository of the Imperial national archives. Still used to store many of the national archives, the Hôtel de Soubise now also houses the Museum of French History.

If any of you are interested in owning your very own Parisian hôtel particulier, the Sale Mansion on Avenue Foch is currently for sale and can be had for only 80 million euros.