Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Hotel de Cassini, also known as Hotel Pecci-Blunt, is a Parisian mansion built in 1768 by the architect Claude Billard de Bélisard for the Marquis Dominique-Joseph de Cassini, a member of the famous family of astronomers. The original project, preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, provided for a sober building with a ground floor surmounted by an attic. After the death of the Marquis in 1790, the hotel changed owners several times, including General Caffarelli, aide de camp de Napoleon I, and Baron de La Rochefoucauld.

In 1863 Countess Suzanne de Talleyrand-Périgord, forced to leave her hotel in Monville destroyed by Haussmannian works, acquired the hotel of Cassini. It was rebuilt in Louis XVI style by the architect Jean-Jacques Arveuf-Francsquin, who included woodwork from the former hotel in Monville, designed by Étienne-Louis Boullée. The hotel then passes to their daughter, then to their grandchildren, who sell it in 1919.

The hotel was purchased in 1919 by Cecil Blunt, an American heir married to Anna Laetitia Pecci, grand niece of Pope Leo XIII. The couple restored it and redesigned the gardens with architect Jacques Gréber, meubling it in the Art Deco style by Jean-Michel Frank. After 1948, the hotel became a missionary residence and was acquired by the State in 1974 to house the Prime Minister's services, including the National Intelligence Technology Control Commission (CNCTR).

The hotel's architecture, organized between courtyard and garden, includes a rotunda decorated with 18th-century woodwork and a marble room decorated with griotte marble. The 5,000 m2 garden, adjacent to the Matignon hotel, houses a fountain carved by Henri-Léon Gréber. Some parts of the hotel, including the large oval lounge and the Marble Hall, have been listed or listed as historical monuments since 1993 and 1995.

Today, the Cassini Hotel hosts government offices, including those of the Interministerial Delegation to the Olympic and Paralympic Games (DIJOP). Its history reflects the architectural and social transformations of Paris, from the Enlightenment to the contemporary era, through the Second Empire and the crazy years.

External links