Imagine building a palace, furnished fit for a King and Queen, and then never using it! This was the fate that befell Cardinal Richelieu’s palace at Richelieu in the Loire valley.

The Friends of the Museum of Somerset learned this via a well-illustrated Zoom meeting given by Brian Freeland, who lived and worked in Richelieu for four years. After the king, Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu was the most powerful person in France and he decided his position demanded a great residence so, in 1625, he commissioned the famous architect Jacques Lemercier to design his palace, and then the town bearing his name. The town was a 17th Century model new town built to a grid pattern and, unlike the palace, it still thrives today.

The cardinal became Chief Minister to Louis XIII in 1624 and he retained this office until his death in 1642. He transformed France into a strong, centralised nation state and was famous for his patronage of the arts. He founded the Académie Française, the learned society responsible for matters pertaining to the French language. His palace contained the largest collection of paintings in Europe and the largest collection of statues in France. He visited it once during its construction but neither he nor the King or Queen ever visited again. During the French Revolution it was damaged and plundered, and was later demolished. Fortunately, the art works were removed, and many can be seen today in the Louvre.

The next meeting of The Friends of the Museum of Somerset is an online talk by Stephen Miles about the West Somerset Oil Shale Scandal on Tuesday, November 17. Visitors are welcome – for details email [email protected]