Palais Ideal du Facteur Cheval

Ferdinand Cheval tripped over an oddly shaped stone on his postal round in 1879, went back for it, and kept going: for thirty-three years he collected stones on a route of about thirty kilometres a day, carried them home by barrow, and built a palace roughly twenty-six metres long and up to twelve high in wire, lime and cement. It has no single style, mixing forms he had seen in the illustrated magazines he delivered: Hindu temples, mosques, Swiss chalets, giants, palms and animals, with his own verses carved into the walls. Refused permission to be buried in it, he then spent eight years building his own tomb in the village cemetery.

History

Ferdinand Cheval was born in 1836 to a poor farming family at Charmes-sur-l'Herbasse, left school at 13 to work as a baker's apprentice and became a postman. His second wife, Claire-Philomène Richaud, brought the land on which the Palais Idéal stands as part of her dowry, and over 33 years he built his palace at Hauterives, an extraordinary work of naive architecture; their daughter Alice died at 15 in 1894, and his son Cyril and his wife died in 1912 and 1914. Cheval himself died on 19 August 1924 (Wikipedia, Ferdinand Cheval).

What to look for

• The four facades - each built in a different imagined style.
• The carved inscriptions - Cheval's own verses cut into the walls.
• The giants and animals - figures worked into the structure.
• His tomb - the separate mausoleum he built in the village cemetery.

When to go

April to October; the site opens year-round with shorter winter hours and closes in January. It is exposed with little shade, so hot afternoons are uncomfortable.

Practical notes

It is a single structure in a small village and a visit takes about an hour. Interior passages are low and narrow. The cemetery tomb is a separate walk in the village.

Nearby

Valence lies southwest; Grignan is south down the Rhone valley.

Key facts