The Gambler

20

The Palais Royal was originally the palace of Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642). Before his death, he willed it to Louis XIII and his direct descendants, and in 1643 the widowed queen, Anne d’Autriche, moved to it from the Louvre with her two sons, Louis XIV and Philippe d’Orléans, aged five and three, thus making it the royal palace. In 1781–4, the central garden was surrounded on three sides by the present four-story structure, with 180 arcades on the ground floor containing some sixty shops, which were rented out to merchants.