Empress Eugénie, Napoleon III and the Duke of Sesto

The Restoration Movement of the Palaces of the Tuileries & Saint-Cloud

 

The story line of  Imperial Wedding of Old Paris crescendos to the France-Prussian War, the Siege of Paris, and the burning of both the Palaces of the Tuileries and Saint-Cloud.

As of 2011, two separate restoration movements are in progress: one for the rebuilding of the Palace of the Tuileries and the other for the rebuilding of the Palace of Saint-Cloud.

The loss of both palaces within a seven month period was heart-breaking not only to the French but for the entire civilized world. These palaces, although symbols of royalty, were much more: they were magnificent monuments of architecture, fine art and decorative art. Each was filled with 17^th through 19^th century paintings and numerous precious objects and interior boiseries that were representative of the finest of their eras.

The project to restore the Tuileries Palace was conceived about twenty years ago by Alain Boumier, in conjunction with the Academy of the Second Empire which was founded in 1969. Boumier, an engineer, was also the Academy’s President and stirred interest when he delivered a talk to France’s Academy of Fine Arts on the topic: “Should We Rebuild the Tuileries?”

His premise was that the Louvre Museum, situated behind the Tuileries Gardens, “proves that something is wrong somewhere,” namely that the gardens still exist but that the palace for which they were laid is gone. He described the “leveling” of the Tuileries as a “brutal amputation and mutilation.”

His intent was to rebuild the Tuileries’ staircase, the Theater, the Chapel, the Gallery, the Salon de la Paix, and the 600-square meter ballroom and meeting space, the Salle des Maréchaux. The southern half to the Pavillion de Flore would be made available either for additional space for the Louvre to present displays and exhibitions or as a museum devoted to the history of the Tuileries Palace itself.

The National Committee for the Reconstruction of the Tuileries was comprised of 1,500 members at its height in 2006. However, after Boumier died in 2009, the movement lost support, especially in light of the worldwide recession.

Meanwhile, the “Association Reconstruisons Saint-Cloud!” to rebuild the Palace of Saint-Cloud, is thriving. The American Friends of the Palace of Saint-Cloud was chartered in New York on February 6, 2011, by Park Avenue attorney Mitchell Cantor, in alliance with the association’s French founder Laurent Bouvet. The association is supported by several descendants of French royalty, including Prince Henri d’Orléans.

In November, 2009, Bouvet gave an interview to the blog lacourdemarbre (“The Marble Court”) in which he explained that the association is a “working group” that would raise investment funds with the hope of paying for itself from fees paid by visitors to the reconstructed palace and would therefore be self-financing. The building could be used as meeting rooms, shopping, public offices, a vocational school or for housing for those who maintain the 400-acre park.

One of the movement’s leading proponents is M. Pierre-Andre Lablaude, the Chief Architect of Historical Monuments in charge of the National Domain of Saint-Cloud. In an address that he gave on December 9, 2007, he revealed that the basement and foundation of the Palace of Saint-Cloud still exists--“We are fortunate to have the entire basement, or one-quarter of the building. We have the know-how, the materials, the stone-cutters.”

Plans for Saint-Cloud and the Tuileries Palaces call for their design to the same state on the eve of their destruction in 1870 and 1871. Each would incorporate the changes made by the last sovereign occupants, Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie.

The web site of Association Reconstruisons Saint-Cloud is www.reconstitutionssaintcloud.fr
The web site of the Tuileries project is now www.tuileries.fr and has been simplified since its previous web site, www.tuileries.org was eliminated earlier this year.