The Hôtel Tubeuf () is the generally used name for a

hôtel particulier () is the French term for a grand urban mansion, comparable to a Townhouse (Great Britain), British townhouse. Whereas an ordinary (house) was built as part of a row, sharing party walls with the houses on either side and directly fronting on a ...

at 8, rue des Petits-Champs in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, now part of the ''Site Richelieu'' of the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

(French National Library). It was successively known as the Hôtel Duret de Chevry (1635-1641), Hôtel Tubeuf from 1641 to 1649, Palais Mazarin from 1649 to 1720, when it became the seat of John Law's Company. The latter was reorganized in 1723 as the

French Indies Company The French Indies Company () was the main French overseas trading company during most of Louis XV's long reign in the 18th century. It emerged in March 1723 from the reorganization of John Law's Company following the termination of John Law's g ...

and remained there until its demise in 1769. The building then became the seat of the French Treasury until 1826, when it was absorbed by the National Library.Ayers 2004, pp. 57–58.

History

Hôtel Duret de Chevry

The current building was originally erected in 1635 to the designs of the French architect Jean Thiriot for , president of the . It was still unfinished when Duret de Chevry died in September 1636, and his son sold it in 1641.

Hôtel Tubeuf

Financier Jacques Tubeuf purchased the property in 1641. In 1642, he erected three buildings immediately to the west, extending to the corner of the rue des Petits-Champs with the rue de Richelieu, which came to be known as the ''Petit Hôtel Tubeuf''.

Palais Mazarin

In 1643, Tubeuf rented the combined property to

Cardinal Mazarin Jules Mazarin (born Giulio Raimondo Mazzarino or Mazarini; 14 July 1602 – 9 March 1661), from 1641 known as Cardinal Mazarin, was an Italian Catholic prelate, diplomat and politician who served as the chief minister to the Kings of France Lou ...

. In the mid-1640s, Mazarin directed the property's expansion northwards on a design by François Mansart. The long street-level room thus created became known as the ''Galerie Mansart'', and the upper level as the ''Galerie Mazarin''. Both are still extant. In 1649, Mazarin purchase the whole compound from Tubeuf and started extending it northwards along the rue de Richelieu. This extension, which took the form of a long gallery, was intended for Mazarin's massive book collection, the origin of the Bibliothèque Mazarine. Following Mazarin's death in 1661, the part of the Palais Mazarin bordering the rue de Richelieu went to the late cardinal's nephew, Philippe Jules Mancini, Duke of Nevers, and was subsequently known as the Hôtel de Nevers. The rest of the Palais Mazarin went to another nephew, Armand Charles de La Porte, 2nd Duke of La Meilleraye. In 1665, the visiting

Gian Lorenzo Bernini Gian Lorenzo (or Gianlorenzo) Bernini (, ; ; Italian Giovanni Lorenzo; 7 December 1598 – 28 November 1680) was an Italians, Italian sculptor and Italian architect, architect. While a major figure in the world of architecture, he was more prom ...

while working on his project for the

Louvre Palace The Louvre Palace (, ), often referred to simply as the Louvre, is an iconic French palace located on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris, occupying a vast expanse of land between the Tuileries Gardens and the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxe ...

. After La Meilleraye's death in 1713, it was inherited by his son Paul Jules de La Porte, Duke Mazarin and of La Meilleraye.

Hôtel de la Compagnie des Indes

In 1720, John Law acquired the Palais Mazarin (namely, the Hôtel Tubeuf and Petit Hôtel Tubeuf) by swapping it against his ''Hôtel Langlée'' (a few blocks further west on current address 46-50 rue des Petits-Champs, demolished in 1827), which Law however kept as his Parisian home until his flight from France in December 1720. Law repurposed the Hôtel Tubeuf as the seat of his Indies Company, and the Galerie Mansart as the new venue of the

Paris Bourse Euronext Paris, formerly known as the Paris Bourse (), is a regulated securities trading venue in France. It is Europe's second largest stock exchange by market capitalization, behind the London Stock Exchange, as of December 2023. As of 2022, th ...

Hôtel du Trésor

In 1769, the Indies Company was liquidated and the building was repurposed for France's finance ministry of ''Trésor Royal''. The Louisiana Purchase Treaty was signed there on .

National Library

In 1826, the Treasury moved to a new building on rue de Rivoli (burnt by arson during the

Paris Commune The Paris Commune (, ) was a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris on 18 March 1871 and controlled parts of the city until 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard (France), Nation ...

and replaced by the ''Hôtel Continental'', later Westin Paris Vendôme). The former Hôtel Tubeuf was absorbed by the National Library, which had been located in the adjacent Hôtel de Nevers since 1724. Part of it hosted the Cabinet des Médailles, now the

BnF Museum The BnF Museum or Museum of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, formerly known as the Cabinet des Médailles (), is a significant art and history museum in Paris. It displays collections of the ''Département des Monnaies, Médailles et Antiq ...

which includes the Galerie Mansart and Galerie Mazarin among its exhibition spaces. Other parts became the location of the Library's departments of prints and photographs (''Département des estampes et de la photographie'') and of maps and plans (''Département des cartes et plans''). A renovation and expansion of the space for Maps and Plans was conducted from 1946 to 1954 by the Library's cartography chief Myriem Foncin and the chief architect Michel Roux-Spitz. The Hôtel Tubeuf was declared a ''

monument historique () is a designation given to some national heritage sites in France. It may also refer to the state procedure in France by which national heritage protection is extended to a building, a specific part of a building, a collection of buildings, ...

'' in 1983.

Description

The Hôtel Tubeuf is a typical ''hôtel particulier'' with a central '' corps de logis'' set between an entrance courtyard and a garden. The entrance courtyard is on the south side and was formerly enclosed on all sides. The street entrance seen today was constructed in the 18th century. The street facade as it existed in the 17th century can be seen in an engraving by

Jean Marot Jean Marot (; Mathieu, near Caen, 1463 – c. 1526) was a French poet of the late 15th and early 16 century and the father of the French Renaissance poet Clément Marot. He is often grouped with the " Grands Rhétoriqueurs". Jean Marot seems ...

. File:L'Architecture française (Marot) BnF RES-V-371 076r-f159 Palais Mazarin, Face (adjusted).jpg, Street front of the Hôtel Tubeuf in the 17th century, engraved by

''Face du Palais Mazarin à Paris''
at Gallica; Deutsch 2015, pp. 459 (date of publication), 465 (cat. item 6; According to Deutsch 2015, p. 132, most of the engravings in the ''Grand Marot'' were created between 1649 and the early 1670s; also reproduced by Braham & Smith 1973, vol. 1, p. 224; vol. 2, plate 316. File:Hôtel Tubeuf seen from the rue des Petits-Champs, 19 March 2016.jpg, Street front in 2016 The Hôtel Tubeuf is one of the last and most splendid examples in Paris of brick-and-stone architecture (popular in France in the early 17th century). Brick-and-stone had already gone out of style at the time this ''hôtel'' was built, but was used at the request of Duret. The building reflects the architect's fondness for elaborate rustication, stone ''chaines'' and

quoins Quoins ( or ) are masonry blocks at the corner of a wall. Some are structural, providing strength for a wall made with inferior stone or rubble, while others merely add aesthetic detail to a corner. According to one 19th-century encyclopedia, ...

, and uncommonly shaped

pediments Pediments are a form of gable in classical architecture, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the cornice (an elaborated lintel), or entablature if supported by columns.Summerson, 130 In ancient ...

decorated in low-relief. A garden gallery, designed by François Mansart ca. 1644–45, was later added to the Hôtel Tubeuf. Of Mansart's designs only the exterior, and not the interior, of the garden gallery survives in somewhat altered form, with crossed quivers and garlands typical of Mansart visible above the upper windows.Braham and Smith 1973, pp. 70–73, 223–226, plates 318, 319 File:BnF - Richelieu - building on Vivienne courtyard.JPG, Garden gallery of the Hôtel Tubeuf File:Jardin du quadrillatère Richelieu, rue Vivienne.JPG, View of the garden side c. 1890 File:Plaque at Hôtel Tubeuf commemorating the Louisiana purchase, 2010-06-12 02.jpg, Plaque on the Hôtel Tubeuf commemorating the signing of the Louisiana Purchase Treaty

Notes

Bibliography

* Ayers, Andrew (2004). ''The Architecture of Paris''. Stuttgart; London: Edition Axel Menges. . * Babelon, Jean-Pierre (1996)
"Thiriot, Jean"
vol. 30, p. 734–735, in ''

The Dictionary of Art ''Grove Art Online'' is the online edition of ''The Dictionary of Art'', often referred to as the ''Grove Dictionary of Art'', and part of Oxford Art Online, an internet gateway to online art reference publications of Oxford University Press, ...

'' (34 vols.), edited by Jane Turner. New York: Grove. . * Blunt, Anthony; Beresford, Richard (1999). ''Art and Architecture in France, 1500–1700'', 5th edition. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. . * Braham, Allan; Smith, Peter (1973). ''François Mansart'', 2 volumes. London: A. Zwemmer. . * Chappet, Alain; Martin, Roger; Pigeard, Alain (2005). ''Le guide de Napoleon: 4000 lieux de mémoire pour revivre l'épopée''. Paris: Tallandier. . * Deutsch, Kristina (2015). ''Jean Marot : Un graveur d'architecture à l'époque de Louis XIV''. Berlin: De Gruyter. . {{DEFAULTSORT:Hotel Tubeuf Tubeuf Buildings and structures in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris Buildings and structures completed in 1635 1635 establishments in France