Brilliant Paris
FR
Hôtel de Sens

Oldest Paris · 4th arrondissement

Hôtel de Sens

The archbishops’ Gothic town house by the Seine, now a library of posters and crafts, with a cannonball of 1830 still in its wall.

Photo: Camlamb, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Until 1622 Paris was not an archdiocese. Its bishop answered to the archbishop of Sens, a cathedral city more than a hundred kilometres to the south-east, and from the fourteenth century the archbishops kept a house in this eastern quarter; an earlier one was absorbed by Charles V into his royal residence, the hôtel Saint-Pol. The house that survives was rebuilt by Archbishop Tristan de Salazar between the late fifteenth century and his death in 1519, and it is one of the very few great medieval town houses left in Paris, along with the hôtel de Cluny.

It sits between Gothic and Renaissance with no hurry to choose: a fortress-like gateway under a pointed arch, corner turrets corbelled out over the street, steep roofs and tall dormers. It was built to impress and to defend, in a city that had known riots and civil war.

Once Paris had its own archbishop, the prelates of Sens had little use for the house, and it was let. Its most famous tenant was Marguerite de Valois, the first wife of Henri IV, long separated from him, who stayed here in 1605–1606. In 1606 a young favourite of hers was shot dead at the gate by a jealous rival and she left soon afterwards. Neighbourhood lore adds that she had a fig tree cut down because it hindered her carriage, and that the rue du Figuier remembers it.

Sold as national property in the Revolution, the house went into trade: a carrier’s business, a laundry, a jam and preserves maker, a glassworks depot. During the street fighting of July 1830, a cannonball struck the façade and stayed there; someone later carved the date beneath it. By 1911, when the City bought the building, it was close to ruin.

Restoration began in 1929 and was finished only in 1961, when the Bibliothèque Forney moved in. Founded in 1886 from the bequest of the industrialist Samuel-Aimé Forney to educate craftsmen, it remains the City’s library of decorative arts, fine crafts, graphic design, posters and wallpaper. The formal garden of clipped box in front was laid out in 1957.

What to look for

  • The cannonball lodged in the façade, with the date of July 1830 carved below it.
  • The corner turrets corbelled out over the street, and the pointed arch of the main gateway.
  • How much was rebuilt: the restoration of 1929–1961 renewed a great deal, so compare weathered stone with crisp.
  • The geometric box parterres of the garden, seen against the Gothic roofs.
Photo: Tangopaso, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

  1. c. 1475–1519House rebuilt for Archbishop Tristan de Salazar (uncertain date)
  2. 1605–1606Marguerite de Valois lives here
  3. 1622Paris becomes an archdiocese; the house is let
  4. 1830A cannonball strikes the façade during the July Revolution
  5. 1911Bought by the City of Paris
  6. 1961Restoration completed; Bibliothèque Forney moves in

Plaques within 250 m

  • 28 Quai Des Célestins · 100 m
    François Rabelais né à Chinon est mort dans une maison de la rue des Jardins Saint-Paul le 9 avril 1553
  • 1v Pont Marie · 120 m
    Pont Marie / construit sous le / règne de Louis XIII / 1614-1636
  • 13 Rue Charlemagne · 130 m
    ENCEINTE DE PHILIPPE AUGUSTE / RESTES DE LA TOUR MONTGOMERY DE LA POTERNE SAINT-PAUL, CONSTRUITE à LA FIN DU XII.e SIECLE.
  • Pont Marie · 140 m
    ICI LE 11 OCTOBRE 1614/LA PREMIERE PIERRE DE CE PONT FUT POSEE/PAR LE JEUNE LOUIS XIII ET SA MERE, MARIE DE MEDICIS,/EN PRESENCE DU PREVOST DES MARCHANDS,ROBERT MIRON./CE PONT, CONSTRUIT PAR CHRISTOPHE MARIE,/ENTREPRENEUR DES PONTS DE FRANCE,/A RELIÉ LE QUARTIER SAINT-PAUL À L'ÎLE NOTRE-DAME /ALORS DÉSERTE, ET PERMIS SON AMÉNAGEMENT/ POUR CRÉÉR LA FUTURE ÎLE SAINT-LOUIS
  • 23 Quai D'anjou · 160 m
    HOTEL/CI-DEVANT/DU PRÉSIDENT PERROT
  • 23 Quai D'anjou · 160 m
    EN 1642/ICI DEMEURA/LE SIEUR GABRIEL SIONITE/MARONITE DU LIBAN/PROFESSEUR D'ARABE/AU COLLEGE DE FRANCE
  • 27 Quai D'anjou · 160 m
    1644/Sur l'emplacement acheté en/1621 par SALOMON de CAUX/architecte du roi LOUIS XIII/SIMON LE BOSSU. MAÎTRE des Comptes/construit cet Hôtel où vécut/en 1691 NICOLAS II SAINCTÔT/Introducteur des Ambassadeurs
  • 31 Quai D'anjou · 180 m
    HOTEL/BOUCHER d'ORSAY/MAITRE DES REQUETES/FAISAIT PARTIE/DE LA VERRERIE DE PARIS/TRANSFERÉE A REUILLY/EN 1644

Commemorative plaques, Ville de Paris open data (ODbL); transcriptions as published, in French. 25 in all within this radius.

Sources

More places nearby

Oldest Paris · 4th Wall of Philippe Auguste (rue des Jardins-Saint-Paul) Sixty metres of the wall a king built around Paris before leaving on crusade, now the backdrop to a basketball court. 220 m · 3 min walk Oldest Paris · 4th Rue François-Miron Two timber-framed houses that look medieval and may partly be, on a street that follows a Roman road out of the city. 370 m · 5 min walk Writers’ houses · 4th 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. 420 m · 6 min walk Small museums · 3rd Musée Cognacq-Jay The eighteenth-century treasures of the couple who founded La Samaritaine, now in a Renaissance house in the Marais. 680 m · 9 min walk