Private mansion Malpel

Between 1654 and 1664, Jean de Blasy, counselor at the Court des aides buys eight contiguous plots along the river to build a new home. Although it could be a namesake, Jean de Blasy would also be the owner of the hotel that rented the Court of the helps to the current passage of the old Palace.
The inventory also reveals the presence of family weapons in the stairwells of the two hotels: a rooster with a crown surmounted by three stars. In the eighteenth century, the hotel was successively bought by the families Lagravere, Bergis and Foissac, merchants and dyers.
It was between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that the building becomes the property of Charles Malpel (1846-1926) which he keeps the name.Admitted to the Toulouse Court of Appeal, Malpel is very interested in modern art. An informed collector, he is the friend and protector of the "wildcat" painters Matisse and Vlaminck. The Dutch artist Kees Van Dongen (1877-1968), author of the portraits of the Malpel couple, would have even stayed in the beautiful hotel, a jewel of the family's collections. On December 26, 1923, Marcel Sémézies describes in his memoirs the workshop laid out in the lower rooms of the hotel: "In the evening, by a terrible storm, I go to Malpel who inaugurates a workshop he had installed in the rooms three paintings with beautiful vaults, the paintings are almost all of this modern art that I do not like, but by a miracle of taste he has made the transition between this decor of paintings and the general decor..."

Between courtyard and terraces.
While the majority of hotels in Villebourbon were reworked during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.The play of the corded moldings and brick panels of the facades is comparable to that of the Place Nationale and its staircase has a remarkable vault of ogives hanging key. Similarly, the street façade has a curved fence wall surmounted by a passageway with a railing wrought iron. In the center, the pedestrian gate, separated from the coherent door shows an archaism for the eighteenth century. Note the irregularity of the two wings of the hotel. To the south, the owner transforms the alley, opened in 1688, in passage on which he enlarges his residence. Thus, the master of the house while improving the comfort of his home allows his fellow citizens to easily reach the banks of the Tarn. The facades, simply homogenized, suggest that the passage belongs to the hotel. Facing the Tarn, a large terrace is framed by wings in return. Above the left wing is a second terrace. If the nuisances of industrial activity of the eighteenth century have probably prevented the owners from taking advantage of this airy space, men of the nineteenth century will know how to invent new uses.

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