Le Palais-Royal, Hier Et Aujourd'hui D'après Les Aquarelles De L'architecte Pierre François Léonard Fontaine, 1762-1853

In 2014, the French State acquired a unique water-coloured copy of the book Histoire du Palais-Royal (1834) by Pierre François Léonard Fontaine (1762-1853), architect to Napoleon, Louis XVIII and Louis-Philippe, painter and draughtsman. These watercolour engravings depict the site of the Palais-Royal at various periods up to the time of Fontaine, who was commissioned by the Duc d'Orléans, the future Louis-Philippe, to restore the buildings between 1817 and 1831.

Through these plates, published in their entirety for the first time, this book traces the history of the Palais-Royal, now a political and cultural mecca. The engraved plates from 1831 are compared with the current state of the building, through the three major institutions of the Republic that inhabit it: the Council of State, the Constitutional Council and the Comédie-Française.