Palais Bourbon

The Palais Bourbon faces the Seine with a row of twelve massive Corinthian columns that hold up a triangular pediment. Duchess Louise-Françoise de Bourbon commissioned this residence in seventeen twenty-two, wanting a grand house near the royal court. During the French Revolution, the state seized the building, and it eventually became the home of the French National Assembly. In eighteen forty-eight, a deputy named Victor Schoelcher stood inside these walls and successfully proposed the final decree that abolished slavery throughout all French colonies.