Hôtel de Toulouse

The Hotel de Toulouse began its life in the seventeenth century as the private residence of Louis Phélypeaux de La Vrillière, a powerful Secretary of State who commissioned the renowned architect François Mansart to design it. Behind its stone walls lies the Galerie Dorée, a monumental hall stretching forty meters long that stands as a masterpiece of Baroque interior design. Although the gallery was originally decorated in the mid-seventeenth century, it earned its fame through the lavish rococo additions made decades later after the mansion was acquired by the Count of Toulouse, an illegitimate son of King Louis the Fourteenth and Madame de Montespan.