The Palais-Royal was the residence of the Duc d'Orléans in Paris. King Louis XIV had granted to his brother, Monsieur, Duc d'Orléans, the property of the Cardinal de Richelieu's palace in the capital. The descendants of Monsieur had gradually turned the Palais-Royal into a center for the Arts with a theater which housed the Opera. In 1763 a fire burnt the theater to the ground and prompted the son of the then Duke, the Duc de Chartres, to venture into one of the largest real estate speculation of the period. Louis Philippe, later known as Philippe Egalité because of his liberal ideas during the Revolution, was then on the verge of bankruptcy and had convinced his family to let him surround the public garden attached to the palace with a building and arcades. The ground floor were to be rented out to shops and cafés. The architect, Victor Louis, was in charge of the project which until the Revolution suffered many vicissitudes, largely due to lack of funds
The present view of the Palais-Royal is dated 1783 at the stage when Victor Louis had already spent more than the budget allocated for the whole project, and the construction had to stop. The view is taken from the site of where later the Comédie Française was to be built, on the south side of the Palais-Royal