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Origin and history

The Chabot Hotel, located at 37 rue de Bourgogne in Moulins (Allier), is a private hotel built at the end of the Ancien Régime, evoking the eighteenth century by its design and decor. It embodies one of the most beautiful examples of a millenian bourgeois dwelling of this time, combining architectural tradition and elegance. The building is distinguished by its red and brown brick diamond facades, its commons framing a courtyard opened by a gate, and an elevated terrace on the park side. Inside, there are wooden floors, Louis XVI fireplaces, and a large stairwell up to the third floor, a rare feature for the period.

The hotel was originally built by the Meilheurat family, which sold it in 1802 to Jean Baptiste Mollot and his wife, Antoinette Michèle Curial, sister of General Count Curial. After Mollot's death in 1804, his widow remarried François Charrier, sub-prefect and mayor of Moulins, whose daughter Clementine married Victor Chabot in 1837. The Chabot couple, then their son Abel (1839-1922), mark the history of the place: Abel, lawyer and collector, undertook important restoration work, replanting the garden with rare essences and receiving the local high society. The hotel, which was partially listed as a historical monument in 1963, escaped destruction in the 1960s thanks to the intervention of the Roquefeuil family, which completely renovated it from 1969.

Prior to its restoration, the hotel enjoyed a variety of uses: requisitioned during the Second World War, it will house offices of the SNCF and then a communal school until the 1960s. Its protection in 1963 concerns the facades, roofs, the interior staircase, the gate, the floor of the courtyard, and the south terrace. The building thus illustrates both the splendor of the Bourbonese aristocracy and the vagaries of its history, from its construction to its modern safeguard.

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