Hôtel de Matignon

The Hotel de Matignon stands as a quiet powerhouse of French politics, serving as the official residence and workplace of the Prime Minister. Behind its discreet facade on the Rue de Varenne lies a history far more colorful than its current bureaucratic role suggests. It was commissioned in seventeen twenty-two by a marshal of France, but the construction was so ruinously expensive that he had to sell the mansion before it was even finished. It eventually became the Parisian home for the princes and princesses of Monaco for several generations, a legacy still visible today in the mansion's Red Room, which originally functioned as their throne room.