Hôtel de la Marine

Before arriving in Paris, Kate heard about the opening of a new museum, the Hôtel de la Marine. 

Discover the Hidden Face of Concorde
Hôtel de la Marine

For the last 5 years, we had seen scaffolding and wraps covering the building and had no idea what it was about. The Hôtel de la Marine opened last year and we decided to visit. The Grand Tour, which included the living quarters, was sold out when we arrived, so we bought tickets to see the Salons and Loggia. However, Kate and I got mixed up as to where to begin the visit and ended up on the Grand Tour. 

James, my dad and I went back to visit this week. Unfortunately, only tickets to see the Salons and Loggia were available online while they are here so we weren't able to go on the Grand Tour, but the tour of the Salons and Loggia were well worth it. We were given headphones that automatically started the narration as we entered the different rooms of the Hôtel.

View of Hôtel de la Marine from Place de la Concorde

Entrance to Hôtel de la Marine

The Hôtel de la Marine is located on Place de la Concorde.

View of Place de la Concorde from the
Hôtel de la Marine

Place de la Concorde with view
towards the National Assembly
and Hôtel des Invalides

In 1748, Paris City Hall wanted to erect a statue to pay tribute to the king, Louis XV, but needed a place to put it. They wanted to place the statue in a pretty square like Place des Vosges or Place Vendôme. At the time, the city only stretched from the Bastille to the Tuileries Gardens. They thought about tearing down some slums and building a new square. But finally settled on the marshes just east of the Tuileries that were not inhabited and already owned by the king. The marshes were drained and the square constructed, but it was in the middle of nowhere. So they commissioned two palaces to be built on the north side of the square to embellish it.

Two Palaces

The palaces were built on either side of the rue Royale. If you walk up the rue Royale from Place de la Concorde, you end up at the Madeleine church. The palaces were built without any specific purpose-they were just built to dress up the square.

The building to the left became the opulent home of the Duc d’Aumont. It was later purchased by the Comte de Crillon, whose family resided there until 1907. The famous luxury hotel, Hôtel de Crillon, which currently occupies the building, took its name from these owners.

View of Hôtel de la Marine from
corner of rue Royal

James in front of 
Hôtel de la Marine

It was not until 1765 that it was decided to install the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne in the palace to the east. Garde-Meuble de la Couronne literally means Royal Furniture-Keep. It is also translated into English as the King's Wardrobe. The Garde-Meuble was responsible for choosing, purchasing and maintaining the king’s furniture, from beds to everyday chairs. It was also in charge of conserving the royal collections of weapons, armor, linens, wall hangings, hardstone vases, bronze works, and the crown jewels. At first, the Garde-Meuble was supposed to occupy only part of the building, but it ended up filling the entire building in 1767. The king had a lot of stuff!

Courtyard inside the 
Hôtel de la Marine

For 25 years, until the French Revolution, two Intendants were in charge of the Garde-Meuble. They fitted out apartments in part of the building and managed all the furnishings, linens and jewels for the king. The first Intendant to head the Garde-Meuble developed the building so that it fully met the needs of his administration by including storage areas, workshops, lodges, exhibition galleries and more. The exhibition galleries displaying the collections of the king were open to the general public the first Tuesday of every month from April to November.

Antechamber to Intendant's
Rooms

Intendant's Small Meeting Room

Wall Detail

Window Detail

Everywhere you looked the detail was amazing. The architect heading the restoration project and 18th century specialists studied the detailed records and inventories that survived, enabling them to recreate the rooms.

Intendant's Bedroom

Intendant's Bathroom

The bathroom had all the modern amenities and people were just starting to bathe regularly. It was considered such an exhausting endeavor that there was a bed in the bathroom for resting after a bath.

Dining Room Console

Dining Room

Oysters at the Dining Room
Fireplace

View onto the Loggia

The first Intendant was a bachelor known for his taste for opera women of loose morals. He ordered the creation of this cozy private room, which is now called the Mirrors Room.

Mirrors Room

Escalier d'Honneur

You reach this room through his bedroom to find large wall mirrors, framed with magnificent golden sculpted decors. The mirrors are painted with flowers, birds, women and little chubby cherubs. Originally, naked women standing on pedestals, not cherubs, adorned these mirrors. It was the wife of the second Intendant who ordered that the paintings be altered to be a bit more modest.

Bedroom of Intendant's Wife

View out to the Eiffel Tower

Wall Detail

View onto Loggia and
Place de la Concorde

The French Revolution changed the future of the palace. A symbol of royal pomp, the Garde-Meuble was not a very popular administration. On July 13, 1789, the revolutionaries seized the weapons on display in the arms room of the Garde-Meuble.The next day, they went looking for ammunition at the Bastille prison and stormed the Bastille. That  heralded the start of the French Revolution.

It is thought that the first shots against the Bastille prison were fired by canons fitted on gun carriages with silver inlays that the King of Siam gave as gifts to Louis XIV in 1684. They had been seized the previous day in the royal collections of the Garde-Meuble. 

On September 16, 1792, about 40 thieves broke a window and made a hole in an inner shutter and stole the crown jewels. However, there were several inconsistencies in reports of the incident: the locks were not forced and it is hard to believe that forty thieves were able to enter without arousing the suspicions of the staff. Was it a real theft or were there accomplices within the administration? The mystery remains to this day. The jewels were found in the years that followed. Most of the thieves were arrested and eight of them ended up being guillotined.

When the revolution got under way, King Louis XVI was forced to leave Versailles for Paris and all state institutions had to move to Paris with him. But it was a challenge to find space to house everything. The navy ministry received permission from the Intendant to settle into part of the palace housing the Garde-Meuble in 1789. Less than ten years later, the navy occupied the entire building. This marked the start of two centuries of France's navy ministry being based in the palace, and it became known as the Hôtel de la Marine. It was not until 2015 that the navy ministry left the building.

The remainder of the tour focused on the Salons and Loggia and this is the part I also saw with my dad and James.

Salon of Honneur

Blue and red on the ceilings

Originally used as exhibition galleries of the royal collections for French and foreign visitors, these rooms on the second floor overlooking the Place de la Concorde included the arms room, the gallery of large items of furniture (fabrics and wall hangings), the jewels room and the bronze works gallery. They were intended for displaying the excellence of French decorative arts and the monarchy’s power. Once the navy took over, these rooms were used as reception rooms and were redecorated in the 1840s. Everything was gilded. The ceilings were painted with blue and red, the colors in the French flag, and had the rooms had marine motifs. 

Ceiling Detail

The Golden Gallery

Dad and James in the Golden Gallery

View from the reception
rooms onto the
Place de la Concorde

During the French Revolution in 1789, the statue of Louis XV in the square was torn down and the area renamed the Place de la Révolution. The new revolutionary government erected a guillotine in the square, and it was here that King Louis XVI and then Marie-Antoinette were executed in 1793. Their executions were most likely viewed from this loggia and the one across rue Royale in the other palace.

In 1795, the square was renamed Place de la Concorde. The Obelisk of Luxor was erected on the site of the Louis XV statue in 1836. Sadly, the beautiful Egyptian Obelisk was covered with scaffolding for repair work, spoiling the view of the square.

Obelisk covered in scaffolding in Place de la Concorde

The most amazing part of the tour was the loggia. Walking by this building many times over the years I often wondered what kind of government building it was. I would look up at the balcony and wonder what it would be like to admire the view of the square from there. And now, after 200 years, it was once again open to the public.

The Loggia

View towards Eiffel Tower

View towards Les Invalides

View towards Tuileries Gardens
and Jeu de Paume

Eiffel Tower View

It was incredible to be on that balcony and look over the square. It is especially nice now that traffic in the center of Paris is restricted and there are fewer cars in the square. It was much calmer.

Dad and James on the Balcony

This museum is stunning and should be added to everyone's must see list when they are in Paris. Especially if you are lucky enough to schedule the Grand Tour. There are also nice restaurants on the ground floor we haven't tried. It is definitely a place where I plan to return to-there is so much to see and take in.