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Origin and history

The Episcopal Palace of Orléans, also known as the former bishopric or Dupanloup Hotel, is a classical French building built between 1635 and 1641. His architect remains uncertain, although the names of Jacques Lemercier and Pierre Le Muet were mentioned. The original, more ambitious project was never completed: only the wings and the main house body were realized, while the monumental gate of the court of honour was added at the end of the seventeenth century. The bishop's private apartments occupied the ground floor, and a large room upstairs served for synod meetings.

At the time of the Revolution, the palace was divided into dwellings and briefly housed the city museum (1799-1804). Restored as an episcopal residence in 1805, he welcomed Napoleon and Adolphe Thiers. After the 1905 Law on the Separation of Churches and the State, it became a municipal library in 1919, then a synagogue in 1971 in the former chapel. Between 1994 and 2014, after years of partial abandonment, it was renovated to accommodate the International University Research Centre.

The palace is protected as historical monuments: its gate was classified in 1912, an annex building inscribed in 1928, and the main body with its gardens classified in 1942. An equestrian statue of Joan of Arc, erected in 1899, still adorns the courtyard. The writer Georges Bataille lived there as curator of the library in the 1950s, writing part of his work.

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