Hôtel de Beauvau, Private mansion in 8th arrondissement, France

The Hôtel de Beauvau is a three-storey stone mansion on Place Beauvau, built from 1768 by architect Nicolas Le Camus de Mézières for Charles-Juste de Beauvau-Craon; the shell was finished in 1770. Its grey slate mansard roof carries three round dormer windows and a central arched dormer with a small finial. Seven tall windows with pale shutters light the middle floor, five arched glass doors open on the ground floor, and a stone staircase of about ten steps leads up to the entrance level.

Built on a former market-garden plot bought in 1729 by Pierre Camus, prosecutor at the Parlement de Paris, the mansion was commissioned from architect Nicolas Le Camus de Mézières under a lifetime lease granted to Charles-Juste de Beauvau-Craon, Marshal of France and War Minister under Louis XVI. The shell was finished in 1770. After the marshal died in 1793, his widow ended the lease in 1795 so the ruined Camus could sell; the State acquired the property in 1859 and assigned it to the Interior Ministry in February 1861.

The Interior Minister is nicknamed "the tenant of Beauvau" in the press. A Republican Guard and a National Police officer guard the 1856 wrought-iron gates by locksmith Roy together, the two state forces under one ministry. The minister's office holds an 1812 mahogany Empire desk made by students of the Châlons-sur-Marne school, said to have belonged to Cambacérès.

The building sits near the Élysée Palace in a quiet neighborhood of Paris. Visitors should note that this is a government building and access is limited to specific occasions.

The gates facing Place Beauvau were commissioned in 1856 by banker César-Ernest André and forged by the locksmith Roy; before they were fitted, the entrance portico was of stone. They open onto the inner courtyard where official ceremonies are held, and are guarded by a pair of officers: one Republican Guard of the Gendarmerie and one National Police official.