General · EdgepediaOctober 21, 20266 min read

Paris 02 Ancien - Quartier Palais-Royal

Quartier Palais-Royal is a historic administrative quarter of Paris, the third quarter of the 1st arrondissement, named for the Palais-Royal at its center. Under the old division of Paris into 48 revolutionary sections it was the section later named Section de la Butte-des-Moulins, and from 1795 to 1860 it formed part of the old 2nd arrondissement (Paris 02 ancien), whose territory was absorbed into the 1st arrondissement in the reorganization of 1860.

Key fact	Detail
Administrative status	3rd administrative quarter of the 1st arrondissement; one of 80 quarters of Paris¹
Area	280,000 square meters, equivalent to 0.008 of the total area of Paris²
Revolutionary section	Section du Palais-Royal (1790), renamed Butte-des-Moulins (August 1792), Montagne (July 1794), Butte-des-Moulins again (year III)³
Landmark monuments	Palais-Royal, convent of the Jacobins, church of Saint-Roch³
1870s transformation	Population cleared and the Butte des Moulins hill leveled in the mid-1870s to build the avenue de l'Opéra⁴

Geography and boundaries

The quarter forms approximately a rectangle on the right bank between the Louvre and the rue Saint-Roch. The revolutionary section created in 1790 had a slightly different, trapezoid shape, elongated east-west in the heart of the right bank, bounded by the rue Saint-Honoré, the rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, the rue des Bons-Enfants, and the place Vendôme³. Its three structuring monuments were the Palais-Royal, the Jacobins convent, and the church of Saint-Roch³.

The Butte des Moulins

The quarter takes one of its historical names from an artificial hill, the Butte des Moulins, formed by centuries of public refuse dumping between the rue Saint-Honoré, the rue Saint-Roch, and the rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs⁵^•⁶. The mound was once covered with windmills, served as a pig market, and was the place where counterfeiters were boiled⁷. Because it overlooked the porte Saint-Honoré and the Louvre, it played a large role in the sieges of Paris⁷.

The hill survived into the 19th century as a dense working-class neighborhood of small trades, dotted with windmills until the mid-1870s, when its population was cleared and the hill was leveled to construct the avenue de l'Opéra⁴. Photographers recorded the demolition: Charles Marville shot the construction works on the Butte des Moulins, and Henri Godefroy's 1877 image in the Musée Carnavalet shows the historic quarter between the rue Saint-Honoré, rue Saint-Roch, rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, rue Sainte-Anne, and the place du Théâtre-Français as the avenue cut through it⁴^•⁵.

The revolutionary section, 1790-1795

The Constituent Assembly divided Paris into 48 sections by the decree of 22 June 1790, and the section covering this territory was initially named Section du Palais-Royal³^•⁸. It became the Section de la Butte-des-Moulins in August 1792, the Section de la Montagne in July 1794, and recovered the name Butte-des-Moulins in year III, as a division of the 2nd arrondissement³. The cadastre of 1810 records it as Quartier du Palais-Royal³.

Politically the section was among the most moderate in Paris. In July 1793 it was torn by conflict between sans-culottes and moderates: applause broke out in its general assembly at news of Marat's death, and the section had earlier tried to push Raffet to the command of the Paris National Guard against Hanriot⁹. In August 1793 it was "regenerated" at the price of violence, its moderates were purged, and radicals took control, soon advertising their ascendancy with a name change to Section de la Montagne⁹^•¹⁰.

The Palais-Royal at the quarter's center

Cardinal Richelieu bought the hôtel de Rambouillet north of the Louvre in 1624 and had architect Lemercier build his Palais-Cardinal, with a theater where Molière, director of the king's troupe, played almost all his plays and was struck by the fatal illness that killed him on 17 February 1673¹¹. Anne of Austria and the young Louis XIV resided there from 1643, and Louis XIV moved to the Louvre only in 1661, when his brother Philippe, duc d'Orléans, was allowed to take up residence; the Palais-Royal remained the Orléans family's residence until 1848¹¹.

Owned by the Duke of Orléans, the king's cousin, the Palais-Royal was one of the few unrestricted places under the monarchy: the police could not enter, so people strolled, gambled, drank in cafés, and spoke freely¹². On 12 July 1789 the journalist Camille Desmoulins and other patriots launched from there the insurrection that led to the storming of the Bastille two days later¹². After the fall of the monarchy on 10 August 1792 it was renamed the "Equality Palace" and its gardens the "Gardens of the Revolution"¹². The quarter around it saw the assassination of deputy Louis-Michel Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau at the Café Février in January 1793 and Charlotte Corday's purchase of the knife she used to kill Marat in July 1793¹².

The Palais-Royal was invaded during the Revolution of 1848 and nearly burned to the ground during the Commune of 1871; neighborhood residents and Banque de France workers helped master the fire¹²^•¹³. With the Palais d'Orsay destroyed in the Commune, the state installed the Conseil d'État at the Palais-Royal in 1875¹¹.

A popular district and the revolution of 1848

Research on 19th-century popular Paris describes the Chapello-Montmartrois district, which included the Butte des Moulins, as a "socio-political factory" where, from the 1820s onward, Parisians by birth and by adoption built housing at low cost on land acquired through a dynamic market of interpersonal real-estate credit, with the complicity and then the support of local authorities¹⁴^•¹⁵. In June 1848 these residents barricaded their neighborhood and went into the old town to join the inner-city insurgents, an episode of the Chapello-Montmartrois district rather than of the central Butte des Moulins, making it one of the "Aventines" of the agglomeration¹⁴^•¹⁵.

References

Initially written Oct 21, 2026 · Edited: Oct 25, 2026