Three centuries of history
The hotel was built in the Mazarin district of Aix in the very first years of the 18th century for Pierre de Ricard, lord of Saint-Albin, received in 1708 president of the Chamber of Investigations of the Parliament of Provence.
Representative of the private mansions of the parliamentary nobility, the hotel is built between street and garden. To the south it displays a series of lounges and bedrooms on two levels, both lit by large windows which bring in floods of light.
Structured around a monumental fountain decorated with a statue of Neptune, the garden is made up of boxwood beds forming embroidery patterns. Shaded by centuries-old chestnut and lime trees, it offered a pleasant space characteristic of urban gardens during the Age of Enlightenment.
During the Age of Enlightenment
Pierre de Ricard rented the hotel to the Marquis de Vibraye and his wife née Grignan, then in 1728 to Louis Palamède de Forbin, Marquis de Solliès.
The Grignan family and the Forbin family have both entered the history of France. The first, thanks to the epistolary exchanges of one of her relatives, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, who became Madame de Sévigné whose daughter, Françoise, married Francois de Grignan. Leading an exciting life between Aix, Paris and Grignan, the family then brought together a brilliant society around them and Pauline de Simiane, their daughter and granddaughter, lived in the neighboring hotel which she embellished thanks to major work.
The Forbin family, for its part, is famous for having participated in the union of Provence with the Kingdom of France at the end of the 15th century. From the Renaissance to the French Revolution, it counted in its ranks parliamentarians, soldiers, ecclesiastics as well as women of spirit who played a preponderant role in the history of the province.
In 1756, Claude François de Forbin-la Barben bought the hotel then sold it in 1774 to Pierre-Symphorien de Pazery-Thorame. This young advisor to the Parliament of Provence, representative of a recently ennobled family, illustrates social advancements under the Ancien Régime. Two of his sons, priests of the diocese of Arles on the eve of the Revolution, vicars of Monseigneur Jean-Marie du Lau, were assassinated with their bishop during the famous massacre of the Carmelites in Paris (September 1792).
After the French Revolution
In 1830, the hotel was acquired by the Countess de Ribbe. General treasurers, the Ribbe have been anchored in the country of Aix since medieval times and more particularly in Rognes, where a bastide still bears their name and a hotel recalls the memory.
Madame de Ribbe welcomed her brother, Monseigneur de Miollis, bishop of Digne, into the house when he resigned his episcopal office in 1838. This prelate breathed his last there; he inspired Victor Hugo to portray Monseigneur Myriel in Les Misérables and left a lasting mark on the history of the clergy of Provence.
This family is noted by several scholars and historians who devoted their work to the region: Charles de Ribbe, author of works dedicated to domestic lifetick and daily life of the Provencal people at the end of the Middle Ages, Marguerite de Ribbe, whose salon was frequented by the representatives of Félibrige, and, closer to us, Gabrielle d'Archimbaud, medieval archaeologist and university professor who left a lasting mark on the faculty of Aix.
Since then, their descendants have never stopped leaving in this residence and keeping the memories of the past attached to it.
