Parigi, il palazzo conteso: L’Hôtel de Montholon di Soufflot Le Romain e Jean-Jacques Lequeu

In Paris, the Hôtel de Montholon, now located at 23 boulevard Poissonnière, stands on that quadrilateral of streets that gathers, between the Faubourg Poissonnière and the rue Chaussée-d'Antin, the rich dwellings of the Parisian upper middle class of the Age of Enlightenment. Nevertheless, the courtyard building, with its monumental colonnade and large open-air terrace, represents a turning point for at least two different reasons: on the one hand, it is one of the last Hôtels particuliers built before the Revolution, surviving the later destruction. On the other hand, it represents the last work - and the best documented, with almost one hundred drawings and sketches of the project - of the professional association between François Soufflot Le Romain (1750-1801), grandson of Jacques-Germain Soufflot - the author of the Parisian Panthéon - and Jean-Jacques Lequeu (1757-1826) "dessinateur et inspecteur" of the project. In the tormented biography of these two architects with a common destiny, the Hôtel de Montholon is the project that marks the breaking point between the two young men's hopes for success and the awareness that the Revolutionary history in France would change forever the figure of the modern architect.