Name

Palais du Bey, Exposition Universelle 1867

Address
Champ de Mars
75007 Paris
Geographical Hierarchy
Author and Date of Entry
Franziska Niemand 2024
Information about the Building

At the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867, full-size buildings were erected in the park outside the main exhibition hall for the first time. Tunisia was represented with the so-called ‘Palais du Bey’, a pavilion designed with reference to the Bardo Palace in Tunis. It was planned by the French architect Alfred Chapon and supervised by J. de Lesseps (Normand, 1870, p. 10). The pavilion’s interior was sumptuously decorated with colorful ‘arabesques’, golden inscriptions on blue ceilings, marble, stucco, and many stucco and glass windows (ibid., p. 12).
After the Exposition Universelle the pavilion was reassembled in the Parc de Montsouris in Paris. There the building was used as metereological observatory until it was destroyed by fire in 1991 (Fierro, 1998, p. 49).

Literature

Normand, A. (1870). L'architecture des nations étrangères. Études sur les principales constructions du parc à l’Exposition Universelle de Paris (1867). A. Morel: éditeur-libraire. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k63798932

Çelik, Z. (1992). Displaying the Orient. Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs. University of California Press.

Fierro, A. (1998). Dictionnaire du Paris disparu. Sites & Monuments. Parigramme.