The Topographical Evolution of the City of Paris 
THE HOTEL DES INVALIDES From Gram 
its kind in Paris. De Brosse was a relative 
of Androuet du Cerceau and quite prop¬ 
erly took as the model for his building the 
old chateau of Verneuil sur l’Oise (now de¬ 
stroyed) which is supposed to have been 
built by the founder of the family and is 
represented in his “ Plus excellents Basti- 
ments.” The Luxembourg also resembles 
somewhat the posterior portions of the Pitti 
Pal ace, the home of Marie de Medici, in 
Florence. De Brosse designed the original 
garden of the Luxembourg in 1613, and in 
the same year began the aqueduct of Arcueil, 
which follows closely the line of the old Ro¬ 
man work described in our first article. 
I he Petit Luxembourg, to the west of the 
main palace, was built by Richelieu in 1629. 
Further to the west was the convent of the 
Filles du Calvaire, of which only a fragment 
now remains. 
The meridian of Paris passes a little to 
the west of the Luxembourg and over the 
hill to the south, where both the aqueducts 
terminated. 1'his hill was a convenient site 
for the much needed observatory which was 
built in 1667 by Claude Perrault, under the 
direction of Colbert, the minister of Louis 
XIV. The Luxembourg and the Observa- 
toire are not precisely in the same axis, but 
the divergence is not great, and the possibil¬ 
ity of bringing them into the same scheme 
was doubtless clearly in the minds of the old 
designers. Under the Consulate and the 
Empire the property of the Chartreux was 
added, the western portion of the garden cut 
off, and a connecting avenue built between 
the monuments. The beautiful central par¬ 
terre, laid out by De Brosse, was much in¬ 
jured in the reconstruction. In the reign ot 
Louis-Philippe (1830—1848) the ensemble 
was elaborated in a charming way. Hauss- 
mann added several splendid decorations but 
lost some fine features. 
The Luxembourg-Observatoire axis shows 
well the steadying effect which a fine axial 
thoroughfare with symmetrical arrangement 
of monuments and gardens has upon the map 
of a city. The Tuileries-Neuilly axis is finer, 
of course, but its extreme length makes it 
much less intelligible, less easily grasped. 
THE HOTEL DES INVALIDES AND ECOLE MILI- 
TAIRE 
The kings of France always had a care 
for their disabled and dependent soldiers. 
In early days the droit d'Gblat permitted 
them to billet their men upon the monas¬ 
teries. The monks and the soldiers, how¬ 
ever, did not agree, and in the time of Henry 
IV. the complaints of both became so bitter 
that in t6oo this king established the Maison 
royale de la Charite Chretienne as a military 
asylum in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau. 
The experiment was a failure, and after 1605 
the invalid soldiers went back to the monas¬ 
teries. After the peace of the Pyrenees in 
1659 Louis XIV. found leisure to take up 
this important matter. A location was dis¬ 
covered in the Plaine de Crenelle, a part of 
the old fief of Saint-Germain des Pres, and the 
Hotel des Invalides was built by the archi- 
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