Paris - Palais du Luxembourg / Musée du Luxembourg

The Palais du Luxembourg is the seat of the Senate, the second chamber of the French Parliament, the other house of which is the Assemblée Nationale. Apart from the Museum only parts of the palace are open to the public, and only on Sundays.

Marie de Médicis, Henri IV's widow, acquired the property from Duke Francis of Luxembourg in 1612 as the site of a dower house. She wanted it to be in the Florentine style of her homeland, but the palace erected between 1615 and 1631 to the design of Salomon de Brosse is very much in line with French architectural tradition. The main wing and the side wings, flanked by pavilions (domed structures with high-pitched roofs) surround a grand courtyard, the Cour d'Honneur; the residential apartments, in the classic sequence of garderobe, cabinet, antechamber and bedroom, form separate units; and there are two long galleries intended for the display of cycles of paintings. Marie de Médicis never lived in the palace, however, for soon after its completion she had to flee the country, having lost the game of political intrigue with her opponent Cardinal Richelieu, and she died in exile in Cologne in 1642. After several changes of ownership the palace was selected by Napoleon as the seat of the Senate abd reconstructed for its new function by J.-F. Chalgrin.

The famous cycle of pictures by Rubens depicting the life of Marie de Médicis is now in the Louvre; a planned cycle of paintings devoted to Henri IV was never realized.

The library, which has fine murals by Eugène Delacroix (1845-47), is not open to the public.