
The Hôtel de Matignon
The Prime Minister is based at the Hôtel de Matignon in Paris.

On 30 September 1717, Charles-Louis de Montmorency Luxembourg, Prince of Tigny and Maréchal de France, purchased, for the sum of 91.00 Livres, 2869 toises (approximately 3 hectares) of land along the Rue de Varenne. He was a lover of gardens and intended to create a country park. In 1722, he commissioned a little-known architect, Jean Courtonne, to conceive and construct a mansion. His success in this endeavour won him entry to the Academy of Architecture, where he wrote a much-remarked "Treatise on Perspectives" (1725). But the expense of the enterprise forced the Prince of Tigny to sell, and it was the Count of Matignon who bought the Hotel, completed in 1725, as a present for his son, the Duke of Valentinois.


In 1731, the wife of Jacques de Matignon, daughter of Anthony I Grimaldi, succeeded her father as head of the principality of Monaco. In 1734, their son, Honoré III, mounted the throne. Although he was open to the revolutionary ideas of the time, he was imprisoned on 20 September 1793. At his liberation a year later, he was ruined, and his property under seal. His sons obtained restitution, but were obliged to put the mansion up for sale in 1802.

In 1808, the Hôtel Matignon passed into the hands of one of the best-known figures of the first half of the nineteenth century: Monsieur de Talleyrand, Prince of Bénévent and Vice Great Elector. Four times a week he gave dinners for thirty-six guests, prepared in his kitchens by the renowned Boucher. As the shrewd diplomat that he was, he held a great number of balls in honour of the imperial family. In 1811, Napoleon called on Talleyrand to reimburse the city of Hambourg the four millions it had paid him in order to avoid incorporation into the new French department of the "Bouches de l'Elbe". As the endeavour had failed, Talleyrand did not consider it necessary to return the sum. He was obliged to put the Hôtel up for sale; the Emperor had it purchased for 1,280,000 francs ... but Talleyrand never reimbursed Hambourg.

It was next occupied by a picturesque figure: Colonel Thorn. Originally from the United States and immensely wealthy, he spent a million francs redecorating the mansion, and gave reception after reception. His magnificent lifestyle enabled him to find husbands for his daughters among the finest names in Europe, and his son married the sister of Madame de Metternich. But the political events of 1848 forced him to return to New York.
It was planned to place the Hôtel Matignon at the disposal of the head of the executive branch of the new Republic. But if General Cavaignac chose to reside there until December 1848, the Prince President, Napoleon III, preferred the Elysée.
A short time later the Hôtel was sold to the Duke of Galliera, Raffaele de Ferrari, member of the Genoese nobility and husband of Marie de Brignole Sale, great niece to the Princess of Monaco. Together they possessed one of the great fortunes of the time; it is claimed that they owned half of Genoa. Founder of the "Crédit Immobilier de France", Raffaele financed many of the major construction projects of the second half of the nineteenth century: railroads in Austria, Latin America, Portugal and France (the Paris-Lyons-Marseille line), the digging of the Fréjus tunnel and the Suez Canal, the Paris

The Duchess of Galliera was disenchanted and quit Paris, leaving her mansion to the Austro-Hungarian Emperor, who made it his Embassy in France. But the First World War found the two countries on opposite sides and, confiscated in 1919, the Hôtel Matignon was declared "enemy property". On 21 November 1922, after prolonged negotiations, France once more assumed ownership.
The mansion was to become a museum; the property was to be subdivided and individual dwellings built; Gaston Doumergue got wind of the plans; he had the Hôtel classified and decided to make it the headquarters of the President of the Council. The architect Bigot took the necessary steps and, in 1935, Pierre Etienne Flandrin became the first new occupant. A year later the "Matignon Accords" were signed between Léon Blum and the leaders of the spring 1936 strikes, introducing the forty-hour work week and paid vacations.
During the Second World War, the Government moved to Vichy, but on 21 August 1944, it was in Paris that the resistance leader Yvon Morandat and his deputy Claire seized the "Government Mansion", the Hôtel Matignon. In their haste they even confused the Avenue Matignon, located on the Right Bank of the Seine, with the Hôtel Matignon, situated on the Left Bank. It was there that, on 25 August, General de Gaulle convened the "Provisory Council of the Republic". Subsequent Presidents of the Council followed his example and, his return in 1958, like the new Republic, changed nothing more at Matignon than the occupant's name, which, instead of President of the Council, became Prime Minister.