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The Palais-Royal
This department store adopted its name from a famous royal residence and shopping center in Europe. The Palais-Royal, originally called the Palais-Cardinal, (as it was personal the residence Cardinal Richelieu) is located in the 1st administrative district of the capital city of France. It contained one of the most important public theatres in Paris, the Great Hall of the Palais-Cardinal built from 1637 to 1641. Upon Richelieu's death in 1642 the palace became the property of the King and acquired the new name Palais-Royal. This theatre was later used by the troupe of Molière beginning in 1660, by which time it had already become known as the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. After Molière's death in 1673 the theatre was taken over by Jean-Baptiste Lully, who used it for his Académie Royale de Musique (the official name of the Paris Opera at that time). The Palais-Royal served as residence for many royals, including Louis XIII, Louis XIV, and Louis Phillipe II, who is responsible for the redesign finished in 1784, when the gardens and surrounding structures of the Palais-Royal opened to the public as a shopping and entertainment complex. The screened entrance court faces the Place du Palais-Royal, opposite the Louvre. The larger inner courtyard, the Cour d'Honneur was enclosed to the north by what was probably the most famous of Paris' covered arcades, the Galerie d'Orléans (demolished in the 1930s, but whose remant columns still stand). The arcades surrounding its public gardens had 145 boutiques, cafés, salons, hair salons, bookshops, museums, and countless refreshment kiosks. The redesigned palace complex became one of the most important marketplaces in Paris. It was frequented by the aristocracy, the middle classes, and the lower orders. It had a reputation as being a site of sophisticated conversation (revolving around the salons, cafés, and bookshops), shameless debauchery (it was a favorite haunt of local prostitutes), as well as a hotbed of Freemasonic activity.
Today the Palais-Royal houses the Conseil d'État, the Constitutional Council, and the Ministry of Culture. At the rear of the garden are the older buildings of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the national library of deposit, with a collection of more than 30,000,000 items (14 million books and publications); most of the collections have been moved to more modern settings elsewhere.
Coordinates: N 29° 34.A W 095° 34.b5c
A=the number of businesses in the Galerie d'Orléans surrounding the gardens, plus 62
b=the number of "King Louis'" mentioned above who resided in the Palais-Royal
c=the number of organizations currently housed in the Palais-Royal
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