Past Grants

Hôtel de Talleyrand, 2004

One of the finest examples of 18th-century architecture in Paris is the hôtel particulier designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel for the Comte de Saint-Florentin, a friend and advisor to Louis XV, that was built between 1767 and 1769 at the corner of what is now the Place de la Concorde.

Jean-François-Thérèse Chalgrin was the chief designer of the lavish interiors featuring work by the most skilled artists of the period: the sculptors Guillaume II Coustou, Etienne Gois, François-Joseph Duret and Denis Coulonjon, and the painters Jean-Simon Berthélemy and Hubert Robert.

In 1812, the celebrated statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord purchased the house. Talleyrand received Czar Alexander I, the King of Prussia, and the Duke of Wellington in these rooms during the lengthy peace negotiations that reconfigured Europe after the Napoleonic wars.

In 1838, Baron James-Mayor de Rothschild acquired the house which remained in the Rothschild family until 1950. Since then, it has belonged to the United States Government. The Marshall Plan, designed to restore European economies after World War II, was administered from the Hôtel de Talleyrand.

A French Heritage Society grant of $85,000 from the Washington Regional Chapter was awarded for the restoration of the grand staircase of what is now the George C. Marshall Center. The work focused on allegorical frescoes by Berthlélemy representing “Strength, Prudence, and Fame presenting France to Immortality.”