page_title: Luxembourg Palace
section_title: Palace as legislature seat
hierarchical_section_title: Luxembourg Palace / History / Palace as legislature seat
caption_attribution_description: English: Partial plan of the premier étage (the first floor above the ground floor of the corps de logis) of the Palais du Luxembourg in Paris, as it appeared between 1804 and 1836, with the temporary chamber of the Senate of France
context_page_description: The Luxembourg Palace is located at 15 Rue de Vaugirard in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. It was originally built to the designs of the French architect Salomon de Brosse to be the royal residence of the regent Marie de' Medici, mother of King Louis XIII. After the Revolution it was refashioned by Jean Chalgrin into a legislative building and subsequently greatly enlarged and remodeled by Alphonse de Gisors. Since 1958 it has been the seat of the Senate of the Fifth Republic.
  Immediately west of the palace on the Rue de Vaugirard is the Petit Luxembourg, now the residence of the Senate President; and slightly further west, the Musée du Luxembourg, in the former orangery. On the south side of the palace, the formal Luxembourg Garden presents a 25-hectare green parterre of gravel and lawn populated with statues and large basins of water where children sail model boats.
context_section_description: From 1799 to 1805, the architect Jean Chalgrin transformed the palace into a legislative building. He demolished the grand central staircase (escalier d'honneur), replacing it with a senate chamber on the first floor, which incorporated and destroyed Marie de Médicis' chapel on the garden side of the corps de logis. Chalgrin also enclosed the flanking terraces, making space for a library. At the same time he created a neo-classical escalier d'honneur in the west wing, a single monumental flight enclosed by an Ionic colonnade and covered with a coffered barrel vault, the construction of which resulted in the destruction of the long gallery that had formerly housed the cycle of paintings by Rubens.
  Beginning in 1835, the architect Alphonse de Gisors added a new garden wing parallel to the old corps de logis, replicating the look of the original 17th-century facade so precisely that it is difficult to distinguish at first glance the old from the new. The new senate chamber was located in what would have been the courtyard area in-between.
  The new wing included a library (bibliothèque) with a cycle of paintings (1845–1847) by Eugène Delacroix. In the 1850s, at the request of Emperor Napoleon III, Gisors created the highly decorated Salle des Conférences (inspired by the Galerie d'Apollon of the Louvre), which influenced the nature of subsequent official interiors of the Second Empire, including those of the Palais Garnier.
  During the German occupation of Paris (1940–1944), Hermann Göring took over the palace as the headquarters of the Luftwaffe in France, taking for himself a sumptuous suite of rooms to accommodate his visits to the French capital. His subordinate, Luftwaffe Field Marshal Hugo Sperrle, was also given an apartment in the Luxembourg palace, and spent most of the war enjoying the luxurious surroundings. "The Field Marshal's craving for luxury and public display ran a close second to that of his superior, Goering; he was also his match in corpulence", wrote armaments minister Albert Speer after a visit to Sperrle in Paris.
  The palace was a designated "strong point" for German forces defending the city in August 1944, but thanks to the decision of Commanding General Dietrich von Choltitz to surrender the city rather than fight, the palace was only minimally damaged. From 29 July to 15 October 1946, the Luxembourg Palace was the site of the talks of Paris Peace Conference.
caption: Plan of the corp de logis from 1804 to 1836 with the old senate chamber
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