Hôtel des Tournelles
Coordinates: 48°51′16″N 2°21′54″E / 48.8544°N 2.365°E
The hôtel des Tournelles is a now-demolished collection of buildings in Paris built from the 14th century onwards north of place des Vosges. It was named after its many 'tournelles' or little towers.
It was owned by the kings of France for a long period of time, though they did not often live there. Henry II of France died there in 1559 of wounds he received in a joust. After his death, his widow Catherine de Médici, abandoned the building, by then quite derelict and old-fashioned. It was turned into a gunpowder magazine, then sold to finance the construction of the Tuileries, designed and developed to suit the queen's Italian style.
At the beginning of the 15th century, the district around the hôtel formed a huge rectangle, marked out by the rue Saint-Antoine, rue des Tournelles, rue de Turenne and rue Saint-Gilles, a rectangle broken from within by the park of the royal estate. During the English occupation of Paris (1420-1436), John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford, extended the district by purchasing eight and a half acres from the nuns of Sainte-Catherine for 200 livres 16 sous, thus extending the property to the fortified wall of Paris, which was then situated on what is now known as the boulevard Richard Lenoir.
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