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Project for the Artesian Well
The lakes in the Bois de Boulogne are fed by artesian wells in the nearby arrondissements. The well in Lamartine square, called the Passy well, was dug in...
Portico of the Macellum, Pompeii
Excavations in Pompeii started in the mid 18th century, although discoveries continued to be made throughout the 19th century. The paintings discovered in the...
The Garabit Viaduct, Plan, Elevation, Cross-sections
The Garabit viaduct in the Cantal region is Gustave Eiffel's greatest achievement. It was the beginning of his sophisticated projects for the Eiffel Tower but...
Mediterranean station
This anonymous drawing was certainly produced for the competition of 9 October 1912 for first year students at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. On this occasion, the...
Proposal for the reconstruction of the Tuileries
Destroyed by fire on 23 May 1871 during the Commune, the ruins of the Tuileries Palace loomed over the centre of Paris for over ten years. As the Republic...
Restitution of the forum of the antique city of Timgad in Numidia
Timgad in Algeria is one of the largest cities built on the orders of the Emperor Trajan about 100 AD on the grid pattern typical of Roman cities, crossed by...
Project for a pedestal for the statue of Etienne Marcel
When walking around Paris today, one can still see a large equestrian statue of Etienne Marcel (1315-1358) dating from 1888, next to the Hotel de Ville. The...
Paris, Church of the Holy Trinity
In 1861, the city authorities in Paris decided to build a church in the Chaussée-d'Antin quarter. The works were entrusted to Théodore Ballu, winner of the...
Church of Saint Augustin, Paris
Victor Baltard was one of the architects preferred by Baron Haussmann, the prefect of the Seine who conducted a major campaign to modernise Paris, and his...
Palace at Giza
In 1871, the architect Ambroise Baudry, brother of the painter Paul Baudry, decided to move to Egypt. He spent fifteen years there, during which he received...
Proposal for a triumphal bridge over the Seine
The first Carrousel bridge had been constructed by the engineer Antoine-Rémy Polonceau between 1831 and 1834. Although its complex structure in cast iron and...
The Black Wall, Pompeii
After winning the Grand Prix de Rome in 1872, Louis Bernier, like his predecessors, took an interest in the discoveries at Pompeii. In 1833, a series of...
Palace of Industry
The idea of a peaceful international gathering of trade, industry and the fine arts was materialised in 1851 with the first Great Exhibition in London. John...
The fountain of the House of the Bear in Pompeii
René Binet discovered Italy after winning, in 1893, the Chaudesaigues prize, which enabled young architects to spend two years there. Binet used the...
The Belle Jardinière, historic old store
This section of the Belle Jardinière shop, situated on the Île de la Cité in Paris, enables us to see the overall design of a revolutionary establishment....
The Belle Jardinière, new store
Founded in 1824 on the Île de la Cité, La Belle Jardinière was the first large store in Paris to bring the sales areas, workshops and employees'...
Place de la République
On 11 August 1880, the Paris municipal authorities launched a competition for the decoration of the Place de la République. Formerly the Place du Château...
Rome, Trajan's column, pedestal
For his second year submission ("four studies of details of an ancient monument selected by the student", as specified by the Academy), Boitte chose the...
Place de la Concorde, project
This project by Louis Boitte was very ambitious. Presented by the young architect at the 1866 Salon, it involved one of the most emblematic sites of the...
Villa Medici
While staying in Italy, Boitte spent the majority of his time at the Villa Medici, the location of the French Academy in Rome since 1803. This magnificent...
Proposal for a monument to Victor-Emmanuel in Rome
In 1880, the fledgling Italian State launched a competition to erect a monument in honour of Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of Italy, who had died in...
Project for the 1900 Universal Exhibition, general view
The competition for the general layout of the 1900 Universal Exhibition was launched in August 1894. There were three principal areas involved: the first...
Project for the cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York
The competition for the cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York was announced in France in the publication Semaine des constructeurs in July 1888....
Monumental lighthouse
During the 19th century, the Engineers turned their attention once more to the idea of a colossal tower. Thus in 1833, the Englishman Richard Trevithick put...
Constantine's Arch in Rome
In 1912 at the Villa Medici, the submission for the second year architecture students was to be the "current state of all or part of an ancient monument in...
Apartment Building, Paris
Although the date is late for the collections in the Musée d'Orsay, this drawing symbolises both the work of a little-known architect called Jacques Ernest...
Parisian apartment building
The decree of 13 August 1902 bringing in new provisions for the construction of Parisian buildings was another step (after the decrees of 1882 and 1884)...
Project for the reconstruction of Paris' city hall
After Paris' city hall was destroyed by fire during the Paris Commune in 1871, the "re-erection" of the building became a priority for the authorities who...
Project for the New Opera House
The competition for the new Opera house launched by Napoleon III in 1860 has become legendary. For the first time in nearly twenty years, the State decided to...
Théâtre de la Gaîté
Baron Haussmann's building projects and the construction of the grand boulevards resulted in many theatres being demolished, like the popular establishments...
Property of Mr. Chatel, 207 rue de Crimée
The apartment building at 207 rue de Crimée in Paris was commissioned by Victor Chatel, who owned the land and the foundry there. The new building retained...
Project for the Reconstruction of the Sorbonne, Facades on the Rue Saint Jacques, elevation
Almost all the governments from the First Empire to the Third Republic wanted to rebuild the Sorbonne. The most accomplished projects were those of Léon...
1900 Universal Exhibition, project
From 1894 the French government organised competitions for the 1900 Universal Exhibition. This period was to allow them plenty of time to select projects...
Exhibition Hall
As part of the Louis Varcollier collection that competed in the Petit Palais project for the 1900 Universal Exhibition, this drawing on tracing paper,...
Architectural Fantasy
Duban's "Compositions" amazed and delighted visitors to the posthumous exhibition of his work held at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1872. These thirty or so...
Composition of Antiques
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the recent discovery of some of the finest painted Etruscan tombs fired the imagination of students at the...
Hôtel Galliera
The restoration of the Hôtel Galliera, today the Hôtel Matignon, occupied Félix Duban for about ten years. This 18th century building, with its high...
The Harvest
This scene of village life in a reinvented antiquity is one of those Compositions that reveal the fantasist and imaginative nature of Félix Duban. Here, the...
Mr B.'s Villa in the Saint Maur park
Towards the mid-nineteenth century, the town of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, about fifteen kilometres southeast of Paris, enjoyed a population boom. When the...
Palace of Fine Arts
The architecture competition for the buildings in the 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris was launched on 3 May 1886. There were one hundred and seven...
Proposal for a monument to the Federation
As the centenary of the French revolution approached, Formigé suggested building a monument commemorating the famous Fête de la Fédération organised on...
Temple of Thought
François Garas was an original, mysterious architect whose lively, imaginative works sought to translate ideas, sensations and musical rhythms into...
Artist's Interior
François Garas remains a mysterious architect, whose artistic pantheon included Baudelaire and Edgar Allen Poe, as well as John Ruskin, Richard Wagner, Jean...
"My Little House"
At the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1909, when François Garas presented his great design for a Temple of Thought dedicated to Beethoven,...
The Doge's Palace
The winner of the first Grand Prix de Rome in 1848, Charles Garnier discovered Italy the following year when he stayed at the Villa Medici. The theme of...
The church of San Clemente, Rome
Charles Garnier won the Grand Prix de Rome in1848. Among the submissions that he sent to the Academy during his five year stay at the Villa Medici was one,...
Notre-Dame-des-Champs, draft version
As well as transforming the road network of Paris, Baron Haussmann set about constructing many its public buildings. It was therefore thanks to him that a...
Longitudinal section of a church
Settling in Rheims after his training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he had studied under his father Pierre-Louis Gosset and Charles Questel,...
Theatre of Rheims
In 1866, a competition was launched for the construction of the Rheims theatre and was won by Alphonse Gosset, who trained with his father Pierre-Louis Gosset...
Rome, Farnese palace
Alphonse Gosset, whose grandfather and father were architects in the Rheims area, trained firstly with his father in Rheims, then, in 1857, at the Ecole des...
Landscapes of ornamental stones and grass
Alongside his career as a creative artist, Grasset was a teacher and design theorist of great repute, giving classes in decorative composition between 1891...
Joan of Arc at the Stake
In 1893, a competition was organised to decorate the windows of the nave of the Sainte-Croix d'Orléans cathedral. It included a design for ten stained glass...
Palace of the Champ de Mars
Assistant architect for the French section of the 1862 Universal Exhibition in London, and chief architect of the Palace of the Champ de Mars in 1867, with...
1900 World Fair
Situated opposite the Eiffel Tower at the far end of the Champ de Mars, the Palais de l'Electricité was the "star attraction" of the 1900 World Fair. The...
Dendera Temple in Egypt
Jacques-Ignace Hittorff, a prolific builder (church of St Vincent de Paul, Gare du Nord railway station in Paris), was an architect with a keen interest in...
Interior of a classical basilica
Hittorff left drawings of many archaeological reconstructions in which he vehemently defended the reconstitution of classical polychromy. In this enormous...
Temple T, Sicily
An established architect in the service of Louis XVIII, Hittorff completed his training with several trips at the beginning of 1820. Thus the young man spent...
Project for a Residence at Schönbrunn
This drawing is one of fifteen produced during Emil Hoppe's third and last year in a class run by Otto Wagner, the leading architect in the Viennese...
Project for a Crystal Palace in the Park of Saint Cloud
The dazzling Crystal Palace, erected in London for the first Great Exhibition in 1851 was so popular that from 1860 until 1894 there was talk of building a...
Wiesler Hotel in Graz, Austria
This drawing shows the entrance to the reception room, or banquet hall, in the Wiesler Hotel in Graz, Austria, refurbished in two phases by the architect and...
Bramante's House, Rome
A pupil of Jean Nicolas Huyot, Hector Lefuel won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1839. One year later, he produced a list of the Renaissance buildings that he could...
Monument to the Glory of the French Revolution
The centenary of the French Revolution in 1889 gave rise to many commemorative projects. The site of the Tuileries Palace – which burned in 1871 and was...
Invalides Railway Station, proposal
These two elevations were for the new station that the Compagnie de l'Ouest planned to build when they decided to extend the line from Moulineaux to the...
A Banquet Hall, 1900
The Machine Gallery built by the architect Ferdinand Dutert and the engineer Victor Contamin for the Universal Exhibition of 1889 was a major technical...
The Vaudeville Theatre
This carefully worked drawing, with its curved top, cloudy sky, wash and gold highlights over black ink, was executed in 1870 after the construction of the...
Project for a church
In1853, the Minister for Public Instruction and Religion asked the diocesan architects to put together some standard designs for churches (for communities of...
Proposal for the Pavillon de l'Homme at the 1900 Universal Exhibition
Many of the proposals submitted to the 1894 competition for the 1900 Universal Exhibition planned to modify the Eiffel Tower, retaining only the first...
Monument to Gambetta, project
Born in 1838, Léon Gambetta was a leading political figure who played a major role in opposing the Second Empire, organising the defence of Paris in 1871,...
Pitti Palace in Florence
This Facade of the Pitti Palace was one of a set of two drawings, a plan and an elevation, produced by Nénot in 1880 for his second year "envoi" at the Villa...
Living room
A collector of oriental objets d'art, and particularly of Japanese prints, this beautiful drawing illustrates the interior designer and architect George Mann...
Atrium de la maison dite de Cornélia Rufo, Pompéi
Alfred Normand, son of the architect Louis Normand, won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1846, opening the way for him to spend several years at the Villa Medici in...
Proposal for the modernisation of the Tuileries
In January 1880, while the fate of the ruins of the Tuileries Palace, burnt down during the Commune of 1871, was still undecided, Olive and Bénard put...
Théâtre du Prince Impérial, project
Wishing to create wider, better-ventilated streets in Paris and make them safer, Baron Haussmann, decided, during the Second Empire, to clear the Boulevard du...
Design for the 1867 Universal Exhibition
Sir Joseph Paxton had acquired an international reputation for the Crystal Palace, his iconic structure created for the first Great Exhibition held in London...
Universal Exhibition of 1900, Project for the Grand Palais
In 1894, Louis Pille, who was then only twenty-six, entered a project in the competition for buildings for the Universal Exhibition of 1900. All the projects...
Queen Victoria opening the 1851 Exhibition
Thomas Abel Prior was an illustrator, watercolourist and engraver of Turner's work, who, for many years, taught drawing in Calais. In this watercolour he...
The House of Solness
Presented in the architecture section at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts exhibition in 1903, Provensal's design came as a surprise set amid the...
Fantastic landscape
The brother of Odilon Redon, and the winner of the Grand Prix de Rome in 1883, Gaston Redon built very little and became the architect of the Louvre and the...
Project for a villa on the banks of the Seine
Alongside his brilliant career as an official architect, Jules Rischmann also distinguished himself in the area of private architecture as this project from...
Proposal for the tomb of the Duke of Clarence
In 1894, the sculptor Alfred Gilbert, famous for his highly popular Eros in Piccadilly Circus London, commissioned the painter Arthur Robertson to create an...
Ash Buds
In 1866-1876 Ruprich-Robert published a seminal work: Flore Ornementale. Essai sur la composition de l'ornement. Eléments tirés de la nature et principes de...
Monument to the glory of the French Revolution
In 1884, it was decided that five years hence there would be an enormous Universal Exhibition in Paris to commemorate the centenary of the French Revolution....
Villa Vojcsik, Vienna
In 1997, the museum was given a rare opportunity to acquire an outstanding set of drawings by three great Viennese architects, all followers of Otto Wagner:...
Project to Rebuild the Opéra Comique
The history of the Opéra Comique, like that of many theatres before electric lighting was installed, was marked by fires. The first theatre, built in 1783,...
Théâtre de la porte Saint-Martin
The Theatre de la Porte Saint-Martin, like many other theatres, was burned down in May 1871 during the Commune, and was rebuilt in 1873. Its façade was...
Proposal for the Paris Opera
From 1821 until it was destroyed by fire in 1873, the Paris Opera House was situated in rue Le Peletier, in the 9th arrondissement. The shortcomings of...
Théâtre des Champs-Elysées
After the idea was initiated by the theatre promoter Gabriel Astruc and the financier Gabriel Thomas, who wished to provide Paris with a large modern...
Caserne des Célestins
A pupil of Victor Baltard, a very influential city architect in Paris (he was appointed director in 1860), Marcellin Varcollier was very young when he joined...
Proposal for the Île de la Cité
The Pont-Neuf and the area around it, and the westerly tip of the Île de la Cité in Paris were created by Henri III in 1578. The beauty of this setting and...
The Luxembourg pavilion
After the humiliation of defeat in 1870, the suffering of the tragic events of the Commune, and the indemnity to Germany of five billion francs in gold,...
Funerary monument
Very shortly after the French defeat at Sedan in 1870 and the disturbances of the Commune in 1871, the French Institute asked the architectural students at...
Project for a Painted Canvas
Viollet-le-Duc's talents were also used for educational purposes, as he published two children's books. One tells the story of a boy who wanted to build a...
Iron-frame house
This drawing published by Viollet-le-Duc in 1872 in his famous Discourses on Architecture, has become a legendary image, a true architectural icon. The...
Trajan's Column in Rome
The astonishing Trajan Column in Rome, erected in 113 AD by the Emperor Trajan (53-117) to commemorate his victories against the Dacians, was of...
View of Florence
The young Viollet-le-Duc, who scorned the academic system, refused to take the usual path of studying at the École des Beaux-Arts. He was thus ineligible for...
Fragment of Pompeian Architecture
After the war of 1870, Viollet-le-Duc decided to involve himself in public life. He devoted himself notably to a series of books for the layman, intended to...
Record drawing of antique frieze
Trajan's forum was one of the largest forums of the Roman Empire, mainly constructed at the beginning of the 2nd century AD by Apollodorus of...
The Temple of Neptune at Paestum
This wash, dated 24 July 1836, represents the Temple of Neptune, today attributed to Hera. It is the most imposing and the best preserved of the...
Temple of Neptune at Paestum. Elevation of the restored facade
In 1850, the scholar Jules Gailhabaud (born in 1810) published Ancient and Modern Monuments. Collections forming a history of architecture and people through...