Louis Visconti

Louis Tullius Joachim Visconti (February 11, 1791, Rome – December 29, 1853) was an Italian-born French architect and designer.

Son of the Italian archaeologist and art historian Ennio Quirino Visconti, Visconti designed many Parisian residences, public buildings and squares, including the Place Saint Sulpice and the overall design of the Fontaine Molière, and was briefly the official architect for the Louvre under Napoleon III. He is probably most famed for designing the 1842 tomb of Napoleon at Les Invalides. His students include Joseph Poelaert, designer of the Palais de justice de Bruxelles.

Louis Visconti came from a famous family of archaeologists - his grandfather Giambattista Antonio Visconti (1722-1784) had founded the Vatican Museums and his father, Ennio Quirino Visconti (1751-1818), was a curator. Ennio and his family moved to Paris in 1798 and were naturalised as French citizens in 1799, with Ennio becoming a curator of antiquities and paintings at the Musée du Louvre.

Between 1808 and 1817 Louis studied at Paris's École des Beaux-Arts under Charles Percier. He also studied under the painter François-André Vincent. After winning second prize in the architecture section of the prix de Rome (1814) and the architecture department prize at the École des Beaux-Arts (1817), he was made architecte-voyer to the 3rd and 8th arrondissements of Paris in 1826, curator of the 8th section of public monuments in Paris (made up of the Bibliothèque royale, the monument on place des Victoires, Porte Saint-Martin, Saint-Denis and the colonne Vendôme) in 1832, divisional architect in 1848, and government architect in 1849. In the meantime, in 1840, he designed Paris's decorations for the return of Napoleon's remains and Napoleon's tomb at the Invalides.

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