The Palais Rohan (Rohan Palace) in Strasbourg is the former residence of the prince-bishops and cardinals of the House of Rohan, an ancient French noble family originally from Brittany
The Palais Rohan (Rohan Palace) in Strasbourg is the former residence of the prince-bishops and cardinals of the House of Rohan, an ancient French noble family originally from Brittany. It is a major architectural, historical, and cultural landmark in the city. It was built next to Strasbourg Cathedral in the 1730s, from designs by Robert de Cotte, and is considered a masterpiece of French Baroque architecture. Since its completion in 1742, the palace has hosted a number of French monarchs such as Louis XV, Marie Antoinette, Napoleon and Joséphine, and Charles X.
Reflecting the history of Strasbourg and of France, the palace has been owned successively by the nobility, the municipality, the monarchy, the state, the university, and the municipality again. Its architectural conception and its iconography were intended to indicate the return of Roman Catholicism to the city, which had been dominated by Protestantism for the previous two centuries. Thus the prelate's apartments face the cathedral, to the north, and many of the statues, reliefs and paintings reflect the Catholic dogma.
Since the end of the 19th century the palace has been home to three of Strasbourg's most important museums: the Archaeological Museum (Musée archéologique, basement), the Museum of Decorative Arts (Musée des arts décoratifs, ground floor) and the Museum of Fine Arts (Musée des beaux-arts, first and second floor). The municipal art gallery, Galerie Robert Heitz, in a lateral wing of the palace, is used for temporary exhibitions. The Palais Rohan has been listed since 1920 as a Monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture.
History
Up to 1871
In 1727 Armand Gaston Maximilien de Rohan, bishop of Strasbourg since 1704 and cardinal since 1712, commissioned the architect Robert de Cotte to design the palace; de Cotte provided initial plans the same year. Seven years prior, in 1720, Cardinal de Rohan had already charged de Cotte with renovation and embellishment works on his castle in Saverne, the predecessor of the current Rohan Castle. De Cotte had also previously designed the Hôtel du grand Doyenné, the first hôtel particulier in Louis Quinze style built in Strasbourg. The Palais Rohan was built on the site of the former residence of the bishop, the "bishop's demesne", which is recorded since at least 1262. The area itself is near the heart of the ancient Argentoratum, first mentioned in 12 BC. Diverse archaeological excavations on Place du Château, the square facing the palace, have unearthed many remains of the Roman camp.
Building work on the Palais Rohan took place from 1732 until 1742 under the supervision of the municipal architect Joseph Massol, who also worked on the Hôtel de Hanau and the Hôtel de Klinglin during the early years of the project. Massol was assisted by the architects Laurent Gourlade and Étienne Le Chevalier. The sculptures, including statues as well as reliefs, were provided by Robert Le Lorrain, assisted by Johann August Nahl, Gaspard Pollet, and Laurent Leprince, and the paintings by Pierre Ignace Parrocel (it) and Robert de Séry (fr). The ébéniste Bernard Kocke and the ironworkers and locksmiths Jean-François Agon and his son Antoine Agon worked on the furnishings of the apartments, while the stucco was the work of the Italians Castelli and Morsegno. A budget of 344,000 French livres had been established for the construction – 200,000 livres lent from the Cathedral chapter (Grand Chapitre) and 144,000 raised as local taxes over a period of twelve years – but the final cost is estimated at one million French livres. The palace is mostly built in yellow sandstone from Wasselonne, with pink sandstone for the less visible parts.
The House of Rohan owned the palace until the French Revolution, when it was confiscated, declared bien national ("state owned"), and finally auctioned off on 8 August 1791. Bought by the municipality, it became the new town hall (hôtel de ville) the same year, succeeding the Neubau. Much of the furniture and many of the works of art in the Palais were sold, and in 1793 the eight life-sized mural portraits of prince-bishops decorating the Salle des évêques (Bishops' Hall) were destroyed. They were replaced in 1796 by allegories of civic virtues painted by Joseph Melling. Only the portrait of Armand Gaston, the builder of the palace, was later restored to its original place with a 1982 replica of Hyacinthe Rigaud's lost painting. Melling also replaced the overdoor portraits of kings of France, decorating the same room with paintings of vases.
The Palais Rohan remained the hôtel de ville until 1805. That year, the municipality presented it to Napoleon, who returned the Hôtel de Hanau in exchange. Like the palace, the hôtel had been state-owned since the Revolution. The 1805 arrangement proved favourable for the municipality: the maintenance of the Hôtel de Hanau was less costly than that of the larger Palais Rohan. It pleased Napoleon, for whom the palace was the more conspicuous display of grandeur. As for the palace, imperial ownership meant renewed splendour. The present to Napoleon was officially accepted by decree on 21 January 1806; the interiors were then refurbished by the architect Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine. In the years before the Franco-Prussian War and the return of Alsace to Germany, the Palais Rohan was the property of the French state, which was in turn an empire, a kingdom, a monarchy, a republic, and again an empire.
Since 1871
The year 1871 signified the end of French rule and the beginning of German rule over Alsace, which had until 1681 been linked to Germany through the Holy Roman Empire. Having lost the Franco-Prussian War, France had to cede the departments of Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin, and Moselle (the territory also known as Alsace-Lorraine, or Elsass-Lothringen in German) to the newly created German Empire. Now under new administration and having lost its residential purpose, the Palais Rohan had to be assigned a new role. Between 1872 and 1884, until the opening of the Palais universitaire, it was used by the newly established Kaiser-Wilhelms-Universität, the Imperial German version of the University of Strasbourg, as the seat of the faculties of law, philosophy, and sciences. The palace then served as the university's library until the opening of the National and University Library in 1895. After this, the palace again became the property of the city and was adapted to receive the municipal art collections that were being built up again by director Wilhelm von Bode after their total destruction during the Siege of Strasbourg (see below, Musée des beaux-arts). The first section of the new Kunstmuseum der Stadt Strassburg, established in 1898, was inaugurated in 1899.
After the return of Alsace to French rule in 1918, the new director of the Musée des beaux-arts and the Musée des arts décoratifs, Hans Haug (1890–1965), put major efforts into presenting the Palais Rohan as a coherent whole again. Strasbourg suffered during World War II, and on 11 August 1944 the palace was damaged by British and American bombs. After the war, restoration measures were soon undertaken under the supervision of the architects Robert Danis (1879–1949) and Bertrand Monnet (1910–1989), but in 1947 a fire broke out and devastated a significant part of the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts. This fire was an indirect consequence of the bombing raids: because of the destruction inflicted on the palace, the building had suffered from damp, which was treated with welding torches, and poor handling of these caused the fire.
Rebuilding and refurbishing the palace took until well into the 1950s, with full restoration not completed until the 1990s. In 1989 a large trompe-l'œil fresco depicting the Roman goddess Ceres was rediscovered behind layers of plaster and white paint in the former dining hall, the eastern wing of the Synod Hall (see below, Apartments). It is thought to have been concealed under Napoleonic ownership, and had been forgotten since.
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