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Hôtel de Lauzun

Writers’ houses · 4th arrondissement

Hôtel de Lauzun

A gilded 1650s mansion on the Île Saint-Louis, where the young Baudelaire rented the attic and Gautier’s hashish eaters met.

Photo: Emlenthi, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

The Île Saint-Louis was still being built when, around 1656, Charles Gruyn, the son of a prosperous innkeeper who had made his own fortune as a commissioner of the cavalry during the Fronde, commissioned a house on the quai d’Anjou. The architect was Charles Chamois, who worked in the circle of Louis Le Vau, the island’s leading builder. The plain stone front, with its long gilded iron balcony and carved gutters, gives little away. Inside, every surface of the first-floor rooms was painted, carved and gilded, and Gruyn’s initial was twined with his wife’s. When his patron, the finance minister Fouquet, fell in 1661, Gruyn fell with him, convicted of fraud.

The house takes its name from a later owner, the Duke of Lauzun, a courtier of Louis XIV famous for his insolence, his imprisonments and his romance with the king’s cousin, the Grande Mademoiselle. He stayed only a few years. In the eighteenth century the house declined into lodgings and workshops, until in 1842 the bibliophile Baron Jérôme Pichon bought and restored it.

Pichon let rooms. From October 1843 to September 1845 the young Charles Baudelaire, not yet published, lived under the roof, spending what was left of his inheritance on clothes and pictures. Below lived the painter Fernand Boissard, and in his rooms from 1844 Théophile Gautier and others met for the monthly sessions of the Club des Haschischins, where guests ate a green paste of hashish and wrote about what followed. Gautier gave an account of it in 1846, Baudelaire later in Les Paradis artificiels. Accounts that Balzac, Delacroix or Hugo attended are less secure.

Listed as a historic monument in 1906, the house was bought by the City of Paris in 1928 and used for receptions and concerts. Since 2013 it has been home to the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, which hosts visiting researchers. According to the City of Paris, it is closed to the public until further notice.

What to look for

  • The long gilded wrought-iron balcony on the quai d’Anjou.
  • The carved seventeenth-century gutters on the façade.
  • The sundial-like meridian on the north wall, out of use since its perforated disc was removed in 1957.
  • The view across the Seine from the quai, as Baudelaire would have had it from his attic.
Photo: Atget, Eugène (1857-1927). Photographe, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

  1. 1656Charles Gruyn commissions the house from Charles Chamois (some sources say 1657) (uncertain date)
  2. 1842Baron Jérôme Pichon buys and restores the house
  3. 1843Baudelaire takes rooms under the roof (until 1845)
  4. 1844First sessions of the Club des Haschischins at Boissard’s (uncertain date)
  5. 1906Listed as a historic monument
  6. 1928The City of Paris buys the house
  7. 2013The Paris Institute for Advanced Study moves in

Plaques within 250 m

  • 15 Quai D'anjou · 10 m
    VERS 1645/HOTEL CONSTRUIT POUR/NICOLAS LAMBERT DE THORIGNY/PRÉSIDENT A LA CHAMBRE DES COMPTES/LOUIS LE VAU/ARCHITECTE PRÉSUMÉ
  • 13 Quai D Anjou · 20 m
    A.V. GEOFFROY-DECHAUME / Statuaire 1816-1892 / Directeur du Musée / de Sculpture Comparée, /habita cette maison pendant 42 ans. / Adjoint de Viollet-le-Duc , / il a restitué les grands programmes / de la sculpture du Moyen Âge, / disparue au cours de la Révolution
  • 17 Quai D Anjou · 20 m
    CHARLES BEAUDELAIRE / 1821-1867 / A HABITE AU TROISIEME ETAGE / DE CET HOTEL PARTICULIER / DE L'AUTOMNE 1843 A L'ETE 1845
  • 13 Quai D'anjou · 30 m
    ICI VÉCUT DE 1743 A 1782/HENRY_LOUIS/DUHAMEL DU MONCEAU/MEMBRE DE L'ACADÉMIE DES SCIENCES/INSPECTEUR GÉNÉRAL DE LA MARINE/INITIATEUR DE L'AGRONOMIE MODERNE/ET DE LA FORESTERIE
  • 15 Quai D'anjou · 30 m
    CONSTRUIT VERS 1645/POUR NICOLAS/LAMBERT DE THORIGNY/LOUIS LE VAU ARCHITECTE/ACQUIS EN 1945/PAR HENRI DIGARD
  • 9 Quai D'anjou · 50 m
    HONORÉ DAUMIER/PEINTRE SCULPTEUR/LITHOGRAPHE/HABITA CETTE MAISON DE 1846 À 1863/HOMMAGE DE LA SOCIÉTÉ/ DES DESSINATEURS-HUMORISTES
  • 9 Rue Poulletier · 50 m
    HÔTEL DE GILLIER/CONSTRUIT DE 1637 À 1640,/PAR LOUIS LE VAU, PÈRE ET FILS,/POUR MELCHIOR DE GILLIER,/SEIGNEUR DE LAGNY,/CONSEILLER DU ROY LOUIS XIII
  • 7 Quai D'anjou · 60 m
    1642/HOTEL CONSTRUIT/POUR JACQUES BREBART/MARCHAND DE FER/SIEGE DE LA CORPORATION/DES MAITRES BOULANGERS/DEPUIS 1843

Commemorative plaques, Ville de Paris open data (ODbL); transcriptions as published, in French. 40 in all within this radius.

Sources

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