PALAIS DU LUXEMBOURG - SÉNAT

Commissioned in 1615 by Marie de Medici, the Luxembourg Palace was built by the architect Salomon de Brosse. About ten years later, the regent moved there. A place that from the beginning accompanied the political history of France. Indeed, it was within its walls that the King's Privy Council was held and where fierce power struggles took place around Louis XIII, Marie de Medici and Richelieu... Moreover, forced to leave the premises following the "Day of the Dupes" (November 1630), Marie de Medici (banished by her son, to be precise) never saw the palace completed. However, she bequeathed it to her second son, Gaston, Duke of Orleans. The building then became the "Palais d'Orléans" before returning to Louis XIV in 1694 through a series of successions. Like the beautiful eponymous garden in which it is located, its name comes from the Piney-Luxembourg family. The site on which it was built belonged to François de Piney, Duke of Luxembourg, almost a century earlier. Transformed into a prison during the Revolution, this Medici palace brought together the first senators from 1804 onwards, in addition to new installations designed by Jean-François Chalgrin. This "Conservative Senate" was then in charge of approving Napoleon's decisions. After the fall of the emperor, it was replaced by the "Chamber of Peers" and in 1836, Louis Philippe enlarged the palace to give it the appearance we know today. It was here that General de Gaulle created the^Fifth Republic in 1958 and re-established the Senate under its current organization. Located in the northern part of the Luxembourg Gardens, its architecture is sober and regular, imitating the style of the Tuscan palaces of the time of Marie de Médicis while keeping a French touch. Thus, the elevations evoke the Pitti Palace in Florence, far from the decorative charges of the French style, combined with volumes from the tradition of the French Renaissance castle. This unique palace, composed of eight square pavilions, also contains a remarkable heritage: the Salon des Messagers d'Etat, the Salle des Conférences with its Second Empire décor, the Galerie des bustes, the Hemicycle, the Salle du Livre d'Or, which contains elements of the original decoration of the palace, the oldest of which date from the 1620s, in particular those of the Queen's Gallery, commissioned from Rubens and depicting the deeds of Marie de Medici and Henri IV..