Luxembourg Palace in Paris is undergoing a restoration

Previously the Luxembourg Palace, the Senate building in the Luxembourg Garden is undergoing restorations. It is located at 15 Rue de Vaugirard in the 6^th arrondissement.

Marie de Medicis, wife of Henri IV of France, bought the land and commissioned plans in 1612 for the construction of the Luxembourg Palace (Palais du Luxembourg). Her husband Henri was King of France from 1589 to the time of his death on 14 May 1610, and the position passed to their son who became King Louis XIII from 1610 until his death in 1643.

So, the building was Marie de Medicis’s special project until its completion in 1645. The original architect Salomon de Brosse, from 1615 to 1622, designed a square plan with pavilions on each side. The north side boundary wall is on Rue de Vaugirard, and the south side faces the 25-hectare (62-acre) Luxembourg Garden.

The palace was a residential building until the French Revolution on 5 May 1789. In 1791, it was declared the National Palace, turning it over to the people.

The French Revolution ended on 9 November 1799. Architect Jean Chalgrin redesigned the National Palace into a government legislative building from 1799 to 1805, and it became the home of the Directoire, the House of Peers from 1814 to 1848.

Architect Alphonse de Gisors enlarged the building from 1835 to 1856.

It became the Senate building of the Third Republic from 1879. It belongs to the Senate to this day.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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