Hôtel Biron

The Hôtel Biron is an hôtel particulier in the rue de Varenne, in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, that was built from 1727 to 1732 to the designs of the architect Jean Aubert. Since 1919 it has housed the Musée Auguste Rodin.

History

Construction and early modifications

The hôtel was built for a wig-maker, Abraham Peyrenc de Moras, who had speculated successfully in the ill-fated paper money schemes of John Law that had ruined many, at a time when the Faubourg Saint-Germain was still suburban in character. His house, the most superb in the neighborhood, was built as a free-standing structure, not entre cour et jardin ("between entrance court and garden") with party walls against adjoining buildings, as hôtels in more densely built quarters of Paris were traditionally built since the seventeenth century. The house is still surrounded by three hectares/7.3 acres of grounds. The house had boiseries carved in the full-blown rococo manner and has two elliptical salons that form attached pavilions at the corners of the garden front. There were sixteen medallions or overdoor paintings by François Lemoyne, premier peintre du roi, enframed in the paneling.

Podcasts:

PLAYLIST TIME:
×