World Monuments in Paris: Hôtel de la Chancellerie d’Orléans & Hôtel de Rohan

Built at the beginning of the 18th century by the architect Germain Boffrand before being redecorated in the 1760s by Charles De Wailly, the hôtel particulier known as the Hôtel de la Chancellerie d’Orléans (aka the Hôtel de Voyer d’Argenson) stood on the edge of the gardens of the Palais-Royal in Paris until it was demolished in 1923 to make room for its neighbor the Banque de France—all but the interiors of four rooms (the anteroom, the bedroom, the dining room, and the grand salon), which were painstakingly dismantled piece by piece by the Banque de France with the view to their being reconstructed one day. After 10 years of restoration work and reassembly supported by the Ministry of Culture, the Banque de France, and World Monuments Fund, the interiors of the four rooms were reconstructed and partly furnished by the Mobilier National in the Hôtel de Rohan-Strasbourg, which was built during the same period as the Chancellerie d’Orléans, near the Hôtel de Soubise inside the French National Archives in the Marais. These exceptional interiors of the Chancellerie d’Orléans, which offer a wonderful sense of the splendor of Parisian decorative art at the time of the transition from the style of Louis XV style to that of Louis XVI, were shown to the public for the first time in October 2021.

About François Bouquet

François Bouquet is curator in charge of the hôtels particuliers and their decorations at the Archives nationales de France’s historic site in the Marais district of Paris.

A graduate of the École nationale des Chartes and the Institut National du Patrimoine, he specializes in 18th-century painting and decor, as well as medieval iconography.

François Bouquet is currently preparing the reopening to the public of the Hôtel de Rohan, which features exceptional mid-18th-century decorations - including a singerie painted by Christophe Huet - that will soon be restored, and, as of this year, the decorations of the Orléans chancellery, which were inaugurated in 2021 following their WMF-supported restoration and reassembly.

Series Curator & Moderator

Russell Kelley was the curator and moderator of the past four winters’ Zoom lecture series on the “Grands Châteaux of the Loire and Île de France,” “The Making of the French Garden,” “The Great Churches of Paris,” and “The Making of the Museums of Paris.” He is the author of The Making of Paris: The Story of How Paris Evolved from a Fishing Village into the World’s Most Beautiful City (Lyons Press, 2021), and has lived in Paris for more than 30 years.