Palais Rohan, Strasbourg

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.[6] 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.[1] 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",[N 1] which is recorded since at least 1262.[9] 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.[10][11]

Building work on the Palais Rohan took place from 1732 until 1742[12] 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 and Robert de Séry. 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.[13][14] 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.[15] The palace is mostly built in yellow sandstone from Wasselonne,[16] with pink sandstone for the less visible parts.

The House of Rohan owned[N 2] the palace until the French Revolution, when it was confiscated, declared bien national ("state owned"), and finally auctioned off on 8 August 1791.[18] 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.[19] 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.[N 3] Melling also replaced the overdoor portraits of kings of France, decorating the same room with paintings of vases.[19][21]

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;[22] the interiors were then refurbished by the architect Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine.[23] 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.[24]

The palace on 5 October 1744, during a visit of King Louis XV of France

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.[25] 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.[26][27] 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.[28] The palace then served as the university's library until the opening of the National and University Library in 1895.[29] 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.[30][31]

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.[30] Strasbourg suffered during World War II, and on 11 August 1944 the palace was damaged by British and American bombs.[32] After the war, restoration measures were soon undertaken under the supervision of the architects Robert Danis (1879–1949)[33] and Bertrand Monnet (1910–1989),[34] 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.[35]

Rebuilding and refurbishing the palace took until well into the 1950s, with full restoration not completed until the 1990s.[36] 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.[37]

Fresco depicting Ceres, rediscovered in 1989

King Louis XV of France stayed in the palace from 5 to 10 October 1744. Maria Josepha of Saxony, Dauphine of France, spent two nights in the palace from 27 to 29 January 1747. Queen Marie Antoinette spent her first night on French soil there on 7 to 8 May 1770. In 1805, 1806, and 1809 Emperor Napoleon spent several nights in the palace; his wife, Empress Josephine stayed for longer periods, from September 1805 until January 1806 (Battle of Austerlitz), and from May until July 1809 (Battles of Aspern-Essling and of Battle of Wagram).[22][38][23]

Napoleon's second wife, Empress Marie Louise, spent her first nights on French soil in the palace, from 22 to 25 March 1810; she came from Austria like Marie-Antoinette. Other royal French guests were Charles X, on 7 and 8 September 1828,[N 4] and Louis Philippe I from 18 to 21 June 1831.[23]

In the early 20th century, the sculptor Ringel d′Illzach used one of the rooms of the palace as an atelier.[39] After World War II, the first great art exhibition in the palace, "L'Alsace française 1648–1948", was inaugurated on 13 June 1948 by Jean de Lattre de Tassigny,[40] one of the chief artisans of the Liberation of Alsace (1944–45).

On 8 May 1985, American President Ronald Reagan dined in the Palace and signed the official Strasbourg guestbook, on the occasion of his visit to the European Parliament.[41][42] In December 1989, the Palais Rohan hosted the dinner parties of the heads of state of the European Council, including François Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher, Giulio Andreotti and Felipe González.[43][44] Twenty years later, before the 2009 Strasbourg–Kehl summit, it was the site of a meeting between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his American counterpart Barack Obama as well as their wives Carla Bruni and Michelle Obama. In the 21st century, the palace was the setting for the official dinner for the 2016 Fed Cup finalists,[45] the gala dinners for the 20th and the 25th anniversary of Eurimages,[46][47] as well as other festive receptions, since it can be booked for such occasions from the municipality.[16]

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  Entrance of the palace
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  The main portal
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  Façade facing the inner courtyard
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  Pediment with coat of arms of the courtyard façade
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  View from the main courtyard towards the entrance and the Cathedral
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  Façade facing the river
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  A mascaron depicting Cybele on the riverside façade
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  Detail of a wrought iron balcony

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  Synod hall
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  Canopy bed in the King's bedchamber
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  Chinese ceramics in the King's bedchamber
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  Tapestry from "The History of Constantine" in the library
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  Bedchamber of Napoleon in the Empire style
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  18th-century pedal harp in the Prince-bishop's bedchamber
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  18th-century cocklestove in the Prince-bishop's antechamber
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  Vases from China and a 17th-century bust of Septimius Severus from the Mazarin collection in the Bishop's hall
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  Painting by Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1742) in the Synod hall
• 
  1660s cabinet from Florence, Italy in the Prince-bishop's antechamber

The Musée des beaux-arts (Museum of Fine Arts), on the first and second floors of the palace, is the successor of the Musée de peinture et de sculpture (Museum of painting and sculpture), established in 1803 and entirely destroyed by Prussian artillery shelling and the subsequent violent fire during the night of 24–25 August 1870.[73] The new museum was opened in 1899. The collections present an overview of European art from the 13th century to 1871, with considerable weight given to Italian as well as Flemish and Dutch paintings, with artists such as Hans Memling, Correggio, Anthony van Dyck, Giotto, Pieter de Hooch, Botticelli, Jacob Jordaens, and Tintoretto, among many others. The collections of Upper Rhenish art until 1681 (Baldung, Hemmel, Stoskopff, Witz, and others) had been moved into the dedicated Musée de l'Œuvre Notre-Dame in 1931.[30][74]

The Musée des arts décoratifs (Museum of Decorative arts) is on the ground floor. It was established in its current form in the years 1920–1924, when the collections of the Kunstgewerbe-Museum Hohenlohe, originally established in 1887, were relocated in the stables wing adjacent to the palace apartments.[75] The collections had previously been in the Renaissance former municipal slaughterhouse Grandes Boucheries or Große Metzig, which now hosts the Musée historique de Strasbourg.[76]) The Musée des arts décoratifs suffered in the World War II bombing raids of 1944 but the building has since been restored and the collections replenished. Besides the furniture and decoration of the cardinals' apartments, the collections focus on the local production of porcelain (Strasbourg faience), silver-gilt, and clockmaking, with original parts of the medieval Strasbourg astronomical clock including the automaton rooster from 1354.[14][77] The reconstructed living room of a former hôtel particulier, the 1750s Hôtel Oesinger, displays 18th-century furniture in situ on a more intimate scale than the rooms of the palace.[78]

The Musée archéologique (Archaeological Museum) is in the basement. The former archaeological collections of the city had been entirely destroyed, along with the municipal library, during the Siege of Strasbourg in 1870. A new collection was started in 1876 on behalf of the "Society for the preservation of the historical monuments of Alsace" (French: Société pour la conservation des Monuments historiques d'Alsace, German: Gesellschaft zur Erhaltung der geschichtlichen Denkmäler im Elsass). It was moved into the palace in 1889, first opened to the public in 1896, and moved to its present location in 1907.[79] The museum displays finds from northern Alsace from the Paleolithic Era to the Merovingian dynasty, with a special focus on Argentoratum.[80]