Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Hotel de Brancas, located at 6 rue de Tournon in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, is a private hotel built between 1710 and 1713 by architect Pierre Bullet for Jean-Gaston-Baptiste Terrat, Marquis de Chantosme and future Chancellor of the Regent. This monument, originally known as the Terrat Hotel, reflects the architectural influence of the early eighteenth century with a sober facade and a portal decorated with allegorical figures representing Justice and Prudence. The interior distribution places noble apartments to the left of the central vanguard, typical of the mansions of the period.

In 1719, the hotel was bought by the financier Jean-Baptiste Petit-de-Saint-Lienne, John Law's first clerk, before being sold to finance the purchase of Renay Castle. Between 1733 and 1742, it housed the Royal Riding Academy, led by François Robichon de La Guérinière, renowned squire who taught equestrian art to the nobility. The hotel then changed hands several times, passing among other things to the Duke of Brancas in 1775, and then welcoming personalities such as the mathematician Pierre-Simon de Laplace during the Revolution.

In the 19th century, the hotel became a place linked to the world of books, successively hosting the booksellers Bossange and Masson, then Henri Loones, before hosting the Red Concert in 1900. In the 20th century, some of the teams of the School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences were set up there between 1947 and 1980. Ranked a historic monument in 1970 and in total in 2021, the hotel retains remarkable elements such as its staircase, living room, boudoir and garden outbuildings. Today, it still houses private dwellings and the French Institute of Architecture.

The hotel's architecture, marked by successive renovations, combines a single house body of the 17th century, enlarged in a U-shaped plan with two lateral wings, and 18th century harmonisations under the impulse of the Marquis de Brancas. The 19th century saw the addition of bookshops in the backyard and the division of the plot in 1881, while a brick building was added at the beginning of the 20th century. Despite these transformations, the hotel has never been destroyed, thus preserving various historical strata.

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