In the place des Vosges, there’s an always-open doorway, which you can almost miss. This is the back door into the garden courtyard and orangerie of the hotel de Sully. After walking through another door, you’re in the second courtyard, which is paved with cobblestones and exits out the front of the hotel to the rue de Rivoli. The hotel is currently the information center for Paris’ historic monuments, the Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques.This grand private residence, one of the finest in the Marais, was built in the 1620s for a banker and sold about 10 years later to a former minister of Henri IV, the duc de Sully who was already in his seventies and married to his (very young) second wife. The duc was tolerant of
her affairs (there are stories about his dalliances, too) and paid her a liberal allowance in three parts: “so much for the house, so much for you, so much for your lovers.” He even built a separate staircase leading to his wife’s apartments so that he wouldn’t risk running into her lovers. You can see the stairway off the front entry in the building; and again, I am always intrigued about the zillions of feet that climbed those marches.The façade is also very interesting. Overlooking the front courtyard, there are four male bas-reliefs above the doorways—each represent one of the four seasons—and four female figures representing the elements of water, air, fire, and earth.
