The Palais Idéal of the Facteur Cheval, or

Where the Dream Becomes Reality

Evelina Rioukhina, UNECE

«Carnet de weekend»

100-Miles Around Geneva

Very often colleagues from all parts of the world turn for advice – what can they visit or show their friends during one day over week-end. There is usual touristic set of places of interest such as Château de Chillon near Montreux, lovely Martigny with its Fondation de Gianadda, or gorgeousChamonix with its Aiguille du Midi or picturesque Annecy with its lake and Château. Everybody definitely visited all these places at least once. There are hundreds other places which are just in a distance of 100-miles from Geneva which are not less fascinating and worth visiting. Those who know such places, please share your stories with us, and those who have just arrived in Geneva, please prepare your “carnet de weekend”.

‘It has to be seen to be believed’

The inscription carved on Ferdinand Cheval’s extraordinary creation is far from an exaggeration. Whether born from vision, obsession or madness, Le Palais Ideal stands as a singular tribute to what can be achieved by one man with a strong belief in his dreams (Jeremy Josephs).

Ferdinand Cheval was born in 1936, in Hauterive, village of 1300 habitants, department of Drôme in France. At age of 13 he had to leave school to become an apprentice baker during his teenage years. After years of hard labour and poorness, he succeeds in character reference that allows him to become a postman (Facteur in French). His daily route consisted of 32 kilometres, and often involved covering broken ground with poor access, steep climbs and a difficult, rocky terrain. Each day on his round he saw stone or pebble that caught his eye, he put it to one side and when he had finished work he took his wheelbarrow and collect them. One April day in 1879 le facteur Cheval, as he was known, tripped on a stone. Hardly an earth-shattering event – more like an everyday occurrence – but the 43-year old postman examined the stone closely and noticed that it seemed to have a strange and unusual shape. Overcome with giddiness and spellbound by his find, the stone reactivated his secret dream of building a palace – a fantastic castle.

There is a long way to dream from reality”, as the legendary postman himself put it. Indeed. 10,000 days, 93,000 hours and 33 years of toil to be precise. His contemporaries regarded him as a madman or an “architect of the useless”, but no one could ever dispute the heroic nature of his task. Whilst contemporary visitors do not pause for long to consider or understand the philosophical nature of the monument, they can appreciate its artistic and creative genius.

1879-1912, 10 000 days, 93 000 hours, 33 years of hard times, is it possible to find more stubborn than me to set to work (Ferdinand Cheval, postman)

His Palais Ideal really has to be seen to be believeda bizarre combi nation of styles which seem to have emerged from far beyond the outer limits of human imagination, where khmer temple, mosque, Hindu sanctuary, feudal castle, Swiss chalet and the manger in Bethlehem somehow all come together and meet. And all around as a host of ostriches, geese, eagles and flamingoes flap their wings tirelessly, angels soar in a cloudless sky, whilst united for the occasion Julius Caesar, Vercingetorix and Archimedes mount the guard now and for ever more. Not bad for someone who had left school at the age of 13.

“I was not a builder, I had never handled a mason’s trowel, I was not a sculptor. The chisel was unknown to me; not to mention architecture, a field in which I remained totally ignorant”. So who was he? Why, a humble postman, of course, in the village of Hauterives in the picturesque Drôme department of France. A hardly educated, little-travelled simple postman who would single-handedly construct a magnificent temple to nature now classified as an historical monument in France (since 1969, by André Malraux), his 33 years of blood, sweat and tears now feted by artists and intellectuals alike. Not bad for someone who the neighbours liked to classify as the village idiot.

And then the intellectuals stepped in to herald him as a genius. Some before, but mostly after his death. André Breton described the facteuras the “uncontested master of medianimic architecture and sculpture”. Others have seen in the Palais the temple of Angkor, a cave, the art of Gaudi, modern sculpture, the decor of Méliès, Neuschwanstein castle, candy sugar creations and the underwater seascape. In fact well before Dali, Cheval cajoled unwilling matter into soft or fluid form, such as the petrified jets of water above a fountain. Inspired by his own vision, this simple, uneducated man reinvented the canvasses of Gustave Moreau, the drawings of mediums, the graphical work of Victor Hugo. Not that Cheval used these materials to build his castle he was ignorant of the rules of architecture and sculpture. And yet he diverted materials from their conventional use and incorporated them into his fantastic schemes. Before long everyone was rushing in to hail him as a great, the surrealists, the theoreticians of ‘art brut’ even Pablo Picasso paid a visit and put in a good word.

The Palais Idéal can be viewed as the fruit of the creative wanderings of Cheval, who dreamed for years in his country ramblings of building a wonderful palace. In this fusion of the real and the imagined, and thanks to his own uniquely poetic vision, he built an uninhabitable edifice, he created his “ideal palace”.

It has to be seen to be believed. Go to see it. It is 100 miles from Geneva, in 1h30min drive. It is worth it!!! (From Geneva: A-40 or A-43 to Grenoble, follow to Royson by D71, then to Hauterives by D34 (if to draw the line between Lyon and Grenoble via Vienne and Romans, it will be right in the middle).