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Origin and history

The Hotel Périer occupies the location of an old house named the Ecu of Brittany, attested from 1565. Its reconstruction took place after 1779, to finish around 1782 in the architectural style of the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The building is distinguished by a two-storey street façade, decorated with rectangular windows with ground frames, crossettes, and masks carved under the cornice. A vaulted passage leads to an inner courtyard, where the side facades open with arches in the middle of the hangar, while an exterior gallery, supported by carved consoles, serves the staircase landing.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the hotel was partially dismembered, losing its part overlooking the rue des Ouves. A commemorative plaque indicates the birth in 1841 in this building of the painter Frédéric Bazille. The staircase, remarkable by its wrought iron ramp, alternate straight and wavy bars, with vegetal volutes and beaded patterns. The facades on street and courtyard, as well as the roofs, stairs and galleries, were protected by a registration order in 1965.

The architecture of Hotel Périer reflects the aesthetic codes of the Montpellier aristocracy of the end of the Old Regime. Its staircase, with its wrought ironwork, and its carved elements (masks, foliage consoles) bear witness to an exceptional craft. The presence of Frédéric Bazille, a major figure in impressionism, adds a cultural dimension to this heritage, although his family only acquired the place in the next century.

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