We walked through the Palais Royal this morning – such a treat. I couldn’t remember its history, not surprisingly since it’s complicated. First constructed in the 1630s for Richelieu. Richelieu gave it to Louis XIII, Louis XIV gave it to the Duc d’Orléans. But the character of the Palais Royal seems to have been owing to the construction of town houses round the courtyard towards the end of the eighteenth century by Victor Louis and the construction of shops. But who was Victor Louis ? Only half a neoclassical architect, discredited in the 1750s for inventing classical remains, so that he was never part of the architectural establishment. But the architecture is surely as good as can be, a monument to a certain style of civility:-