Postman Cheval – The Ideal Palace – south
Today, Ferdinand Cheval is considered to be one of the most remarkable representatives of naive architecture, but during his lifetime people thought of him as the village idiot.
Did you know…
- the building that made him world famous is called Le Palais Idéal (the Ideal Palace)
- he was actually a postman; people called him Facteur Cheval
- how it all started:
- one day in 1879, he tripped on a stone and almost fell
- looking at the stone, he was overwhelmed by its beauty and he put the stone in his pocket
- the stone reminded him of a dream he had a year before. In that dream he was building a palace
- the next day he went back and found more stones. He continued to do this for 33 years
- Cheval bound the stones together with lime, mortar and cement and so he started to build his Ideal Palace
- he merely worked at night by the light of an oil lamp
- Just before he died, he received recognition from André Breton and Pablo Picasso
This was the first stone he collected:
His first stone
This is the Ideal Palace:
The Ideal Palace
The ideal palace
detail East
detail – north
- Cheval wanted to be buried in his Ideal Palace, but this is illegal in France
- thus, he started building a mausoleum in the same style as his Ideal palace on the local cemetary
- he spent 8 more years on the mausoleum
- 1 year after he was finished, he died
- Ferdinand “Postman” Cheval was buried in his Ideal Mausoleum
This is the mausoleum:
mausoleum
