Ideal Palace of the Postman Ferdinand Cheval
- Ben Samuel
- Jun 24
- 3 min read
The French mail carrier who spent 33 years building Le Palais idéal or the "Ideal Palace"
"1879 - 1912 10000 days, 93000 hours, 33 years of struggle. Let those who think they can do better try." - Ferdinand Cheval
Ferdinand Cheval was a rural french postman who began building his Palais Idéal in 1879 when he was 43. He spent the next 33 years building his palace and making his dreams a reality.
When he was denied permission to be buried with his palace he then spent the last 8 years of his life building a tomb for himself. Below he describes the moment he decided to build his "Palais idéal".
"I was walking very fast when my foot caught on something that sent me stumbling a few metres away, I wanted to know the cause. (Previously, in) a dream, I had built a palace, a castle or caves, I cannot express it well... I told no one about it for fear of being ridiculed and I felt ridiculous myself. Then fifteen years later, when I had almost forgotten my dream, when I wasn't thinking of it at all, my foot reminded me of it. My foot tripped on a stone that almost made me fall. I wanted to know what it was... It was a stone of such a strange shape that I put it in my pocket to admire it at my leisure. The next day, I went back to the same place. I found more stones, even more beautiful, I gathered them together on the spot and was overcome with delight... It's a sandstone shaped by water and hardened by the power of time. It becomes as hard as pebbles. It represents a sculpture so strange that it is impossible for man to imitate, it represents any kind of animal, any kind of caricature. I said to myself: since Nature is willing to do the sculpture, I will do the masonry and the architecture." - Ferdinand Cheval
"As a peasant's son, I want to live and die to prove that in my class there are also men of genius and energy. For twenty-nine years I remained a rural postman. Work is my glory and honour my only happiness; now here is my strange story. Where the dream has become, forty years later, a reality." - Ferdinand Cheval
"Out of a dream I have brought forth the Queen of the World" - Ferdinand Cheval
Below is a short film which I edited from footage said to be the first filmed within the palace. I do not have credits for the filmmaker.
“The postman Cheval, (…) remains the undisputed master of mediumistic sculpture and architecture” - Andre Breton
“Cheval himself called his Palace a temple to nature. Not a temple to the nature of travellers, landscapists, or even Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but to nature as dreamt by a genius expressing the vision of a class of cunning, hardened survivors.” - John Berger
Ferdinand Cheval littered his Palais Idéal with quotes and poem some of which I have quoted above and others, such as..
"If you look for gold you will find it in elbow grease" "The Pantheon of an obscure hero" "The work of one man" "This is of art, and of energy" "The ecstasy of a beautiful dream and the prize of effort" "Dream of a peasant" "Temple of Life" "Palace of the Imagination"
You can visit "Le Palais idéal" or "Facteur Cheval" today. Link to the official website below..
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