Pierre Boulat

Inspired Homes / 9 – Victor Hugo’s

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Hauteville House in Guernsey: “A poem in several rooms”

Exiled following the coup d’état of 2 December 1951 perpetrated by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Victor Hugo eventually acquired a house in Guernsey in which he stayed until 1870.

The large house, of 18 rooms, which, from the top of the hill dominates Saint-Pierre-le-Port, testifies to its creative genius. She is baroque and black, eccentric and crazy, white and mysterious. Victor Hugo put all his talent of imagination, drawing, manufacturing all the furniture, using panels taken with antique sculpted linen boxes, doors of the XVI ° century, more than 150 square meters of tapestries of Aubusson and Gobelins, an ample collection of chinoiseries, porcelains, mirrors, clocks and ceramics It is on the top floor of this house, in the glass “lookout”, thus called by himself, that he completed “Les Miserables” and wrote “Les Travailleurs de la Mer”.