By Ljiljana Maletin Vojvodić //

In the Marais district, in Paris’s 4th arrondissement, behind narrow streets and the influx of tourists, lies the Historical Library of the City of Paris (Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris – BHVP), housed in the Hôtel de Lamoignon, one of the oldest private mansions in this neighborhood, which later became a public space. During my artist-in-residency stay in Paris, the library became my studio since in the apartment I was assigned for work (despite its windows overlooking the Seine and Notre-Dame), I couldn’t manage to write because of the noise from traffic, people, and the boulevards.

The Building: Hôtel de Lamoignon

The Hôtel de Lamoignon was built in the late 16th century (around 1584–1588) by order of Diane de France, the illegitimate daughter of King Henry II. The building was constructed in a Renaissance-Mannerist style, characterized by tall windows and an elegant courtyard. Over the centuries, it changed owners — among them notable lawyers, nobles, and intellectuals. Its most famous resident was Guillaume de Lamoignon, president of the Paris Parliament in the 17th century, after whom the building is named today.

In the 20th century, the Hôtel de Lamoignon was restored and repurposed for cultural use. Since 1969, it has been home to the BHVP — a library dedicated to the history of Paris.

Alphonse Daudet

The Historical Library of the City of Paris (BHVP), now located in the Hôtel de Lamoignon in the Marais (4th arrondissement), was once the residence of Alphonse Daudet. He lived there with his family between 1876 and 1897 — the last roughly 20 years of his life.

Thus, this historic building was his home before it became a library. The BHVP moved into the building only in 1959, when it was restored and adapted for library use.

The Library: BHVP

The Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris was founded in 1871, after the previous city library burned down during the Paris Commune. Its mission is to collect, preserve, and provide access to documents that testify to the past and the development of Paris, from the Middle Ages to modern times.

Collections include: Books, prints, and manuscripts related to Paris (more than 1 million items); lithographs, engravings, drawings, and photographs (including significant 19th-century collections); archives of personalities who were created in Paris — artists, architects, historians, urban planners; city plans and maps, documentation of Parisian architecture and urbanism.

The library is scholarly but open to the public. It is an ideal place for researchers, writers, art history students, and anyone interested in Paris behind the scenes — its life in archives, forgotten streets, and revised projects. But it is also a place where anyone in Paris can come to sit and write.

Curiosities

The library preserves a small Renaissance-era garden, a rare find in urban Paris.

The building survived the French Revolution, and some rooms still feature original fireplaces and wall decorations from the 17th and 18th centuries.

BHVP Today

The BHVP and Hôtel de Lamoignon are hidden away from the tourist noise of the Marais. In the shady garden behind the building, readers, locals, and even tourists often sit, while inside the library — especially in the reading rooms — there is an almost museum-like silence.