The Hôtel de Vendôme was built as a private home

Hôtel particulier

In French contexts an hôtel particulier is an urban "private house" of a grand sort. Whereas an ordinary maison was built as part of a row, sharing party walls with the houses on either side and directly fronting on a street, an hôtel particulier was often free-standing, and by the 18th century it...

 in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

; the famous Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond

Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond

Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was a French architect and garden designer who became the chief architect of Saint Petersburg in 1716.- Career in France :...

 worked on the hôtel.

The hôtel is the main relic of what once was the most popular convent in Paris, the Vauvert Charterhouse; founded by Saint-Louis and famous for its vineyard called the Clos de la Forge, on the location of which the School now stands!

From 1706 to 1707, the Carthusians, under Le Blond's superintendence had a great house built at the expense of Antoine de La Porte, canon of Notre-Dame (despite the legend, the architect was not Courtonne, but Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond, 1679-1719.

The Hotel was rented in 1714 by the Dowager Duchess of Vendôme who had it modified to its present condition two years later by Le Blond. The Duchess was the widow of Louis Joseph de Bourbon - the famous military general and greart grandson of Gabrielle d'Estrées

Gabrielle d'Estrées

Gabrielle d'Estrées, Duchess of Beaufort and Verneuil, Marchioness of Monceaux was a French mistress of King Henry IV of France, born at either the Château de la Bourdaisière in Montlouis-sur-Loire, in Touraine, or at the château de Cœuvres, in Picardy....

; she was also the youngest grandchild of le Grand Condé

Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé

Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé was a French general and the most famous representative of the Condé branch of the House of Bourbon. Prior to his father's death in 1646, he was styled the Duc d'Enghien...

.

The Dowager Duchess who died in 1718 killed by alcoholism, is probably no prestige sponsor for the residence, better illustrated by the family de Chaulnes who dwelt there from 1733 to 1758.

In particular by Michel Ferdinand d'Albert d'Ailly

Michel Ferdinand d'Albert d'Ailly

Michel Ferdinand d'Albert d'Ailly , Duke of Picquigny and then Duke of Chaulnes from 1744, was a French astronomer and physicist.-Biography:...

 (1714-1769), Duke of Chaulnes

Duke of Chaulnes

The title of Duke of Chaulnes , a French peerage, is held by the Albert family beginning in 1621.-History:The Duchy of Chaulnes was established by a letters patent of January 1621, registered on 6 March 1621 at the Parliament of Paris in favour of a younger brother of Charles d'Albert, Duke of...

. Member of the Academy of Sciences, he devoted his life to physics, and in particular to optics (Chaulnes's method, for measuring refraction indices) and measurement instruments; like all scientists of the time, he was interested in the sciences of nature and his Museum of Natural History was in these surroundings the unfortunately gone ancestor of the present collections who, alone, let one admire the renowned suite of rooms of the "Hôtel de Vendôme".

Today the hôtel is the home of the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris

École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris

The École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris was created in 1783 by King Louis XVI in order to train intelligent directors of mines. It is one of the most prominent French engineering schoolsThe École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris (also known as Mines ParisTech, École des Mines de...

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