On December 4, 1642, Cardinal Richelieu died. He left his palace to his friend, the king. But Louis XIII never had a chance to use it, for he died
just five months later. His son and heir to the throne,
Louis XIV, was then only four years old, much too young to run a country. So young Louis' mother,
Anne of Austria, ruled in his name as Regent until he was old enough to take the crown. She didn’t like the draughty then-300-year-old Louvre Palace, so she moved the boy King and his little brother, Philippe Duc d’Orleans, to the more modern
Palais Cardinal. Because members of the royal family were now living in the palace, its name was changed to the
Palais Royal.
On his 13th birthday, in September 1652, Louis XIV declared himself King. He moved back to the Louvre Palace, where he lived for 30 years before transferring his family and the entire French government to
Versailles in 1682. The
Palais Royal remained the home of his younger brother, Philippe Duc d’Orleans. It would stay in the hands of the Orleans branch of the royal family for the next 150 years. By 1789, the
Palais Royal was home to Philippe’s great-grandson,
Louis-Philippe Joseph II Duc d’Orleans, the first cousin of King Louis XVI and royal member of the new
National Assembly.
During their first century-and-a-half, the gardens of the
Palais Royal were private, enclosed by the backs of houses that grew up around them but faced the outer lying streets. Louis-Philippe Joseph II Duc d’Orleans changed that. From 1781-84, he transformed the gardens from a private domain into a popular Parisian social center, creating France’s first-ever public shopping arcade.
The truth is: the Duc d’Orleans needed money. He was a notorious gambler and he squandered the Orleans family fortune building a private pleasure garden (now called the
Parc Monceau) to
rival
Marie Antoinette’s hameau at Versailles. So, he built this new housing and shopping complex around the perimeter of the
Palais Royal gardens, and he did something never before done in France: He sold or rented the apartment spaces to people from all levels of French society, with large apartments for the wealthy on the first level, and smaller, more affordable apartments as you reached the roof. He rented the ground-floor gallery spaces to cafés, smart shops, theatres, restaurants, even a few gambling casinos.
He encouraged printing presses to open at the Palais Royal, too; presses that published and distributed journals and broadsheets expressing the Enlightenment views the king and his council considered so treasonous.
But because these were royal grounds, the king’s police were not permitted to enter the property. By royal edict, neither Louis-Philippe, nor those who printed rebellious literature at the
Palais Royal, could be censored. It was thanks to these broadsheets that people outside Paris kept up-to-date with the events taking place in the French capital in 1789.
In a few short years Louis-Philippe Joseph II Duc d’Orleans turned the
Palais Royal into
the place to be in Paris! Since their opening, the gardens were crowded both day and night. One journal wrote that if you threw an apple from an apartment window it would never hit the ground – that’s how thick the crowd could be! Café tables and chairs spilled out into the gardens at all hours. Circus acts and street performers entertained the crowds. Parisians as well as visitors from the provinces and abroad came to the
Palais Royal to shop, gamble, drink, mingle, and discuss the ideas of Enlightenment philosophy without threat of censorship or imprisonment.
It was also where, in 1789, it was very fashionable to talk of Revolution. Thus it is said that the French Revolution started at the Palais Royal, the home of the King Louis XVI's own cousin!
Have you ever wondered why France is so famous for La Haute Cuisine? Well, the answer lies with the French Revolution. You see, prior to the Revolution, the finest chefs in France worked in the grand kitchens of the grandest chateaux of the royal and noble families. When the Revolution began to gather momentum, many royals and nobles fled, leaving their cooks and other kitchen staff without a livelihood. These individuals packed up their former employers' pots and pans and moved to Paris to open restaurants, serving the tastes of the growing numbers of revolutionary bourgeoisie.
