The Palace was originally built beginning in 1722 for Louise Françoise de Bourbon, the duchesse de Bourbon, the legitimized daughter of Louis XIV and the Marquise de Montespan. Four successive architects, Lorenzo Giardini, Pierre Cailleteau, Jean Aubert and Jacques Gabriel completed the house in 1728. It was nationalized during the French Revolution, and from 1795 to 1799, during the Directory, it was the meeting place of the Council of Five Hundred, which chose the government leaders. Beginning in 1806, during Napoleon's First French Empire, Bernard poyet's Neoclassical facade was added to mirror that of Church of the Madeleine, facing it across the Seine and the Place de la Concorde.