Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The Hotel de Coulanges is a mansion built between 1627 and 1634 in the Marais, in Paris, for Jean-Baptiste Scarron, Sieur de Saint-Try. Built on land acquired in 1627, it initially consists of a housing body and a perpendicular wing, probably those now overlooking the garden and the right wing. This building should not be confused with the Hotel Coulanges of Place Royale (now Place des Vosges), where Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, future Madame de Sévigné, was born in 1626.

In 1640, the hotel was acquired by Philip II of Coulanges, guardian of the young Mary after the sale of the family hotel in Place Royale. Mary lived there until her marriage in 1644. His cousin Philippe-Emmanuel de Coulanges, heir in 1659, undertook important works: re-dressing of the right wing, elongation of the house body, reconstruction of the left wing further east, and addition of arcades decorated with mascarons. These transformations mark the architectural climax of the hotel under the Coulanges family.

Sold in 1662 to Michel Le Tellier, Chancellor of Louis XIV, the hotel became the "small hotel Le Tellier". According to the Memoirs of the Marquis de Sourches, Madame Darbon, wife of the intendant Jean Darbon, secretly raised six illegitimate children of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan. After the death of Le Tellier in 1685, the small hotel passed to his son Charles Maurice, Archbishop of Reims, who rented him and sold him in 1703 to Edme Beaugier, a general farmer.

In the 18th century, Beaugier modernized the façade in 1707, replacing the building on street with a wall pierced by a rocky portal decorated with mascarons. In 1748 André Charles Louis Chabenat, president of Parliament, enlarged the property by buying the adjoining house of 37 and the hotel of 14-16 rue des Rosiers. He had a rotunda built for his wife and harmonized the central body. The hotel changed hands again in 1775, before being seized during the Terror in 1794, when its last owner, Durand-Pierre Puy de Vérine, was guillotined.

Threatened by destruction in 1961, the hotel is saved by a citizen mobilization and classified as a historical monument. Restored between 1975 and 1978, it then houses the Maison de l'Europe in Paris until 2017, then a space dedicated to fashion and design. Since 2024, it has hosted a Dover Street Market concept store, after a renovation by Rei Kawakubo. The architecture mixes stone-cut, Louis XIV ironwork, and rock decorations, while the court of honour retains its mascaron arcades.

Future

Today it houses the Maison de l'Europe in Paris.

External links