I love reflections. They’re like little hallucinations in every window. What’s real and what’s not.
Completed in 1639 and originally called the Palais-Cardinal, the Palais-Royal was the personal residence of Cardinal Richelieu. It subsequently housed members of the French, Austrian and English royal families up to the time that the Palace of Versailles was built.
During the second half of the 16th century, the Palais-Royal became the epicentre of Paris society where the crème de la crème came to see and be seen
Today the Palais-Royal houses the Conseil d’État, the Constitutional Council, and the Ministry of Culture. At the rear of the garden are the older buildings of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the national library of deposit, with a collection of more than 30,000,000 items (14 million books and publications). Now classified as a “Remarkable Garden” by the French Ministry of Culture, the Palais-Royal and its adjacent arcaded galleries, are located close to the Louvre and the busy thoroughfares of avenue de l’Opéra and rue de Rivoli.
