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.

"[7][8] For the next 33 years, Cheval picked up stones during his daily mail rounds and carried them home to build the Palais idéal.

The palace materials mainly consist of stones (river washed), pebbles, porous tufa and fossils of different shapes and sizes.

When visitors arrive at the palace, the first thing they see is the southern facade, approximately 26 metres (85 feet) long and up to 10 m (33 ft) high.

The decoration resembles aspects of both the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, England and Antoni Gaudí's Sagrada Família.

[6] In his essay on the achievement, John Berger writes: “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.”[9] Three giant stones, each with doll-like faces, standing about 10.5 metres high, serve not only as decoration but as a support system for the Barbary Tower, with a line of cement swans leading up to a spiral staircase.

[6] The north facade exhibits a long path dotted with large openings to provide plentiful light leading into the heart of the palace itself.

It includes the Temple of Nature, an Egyptian style temple-like structure supported by large, thick sandstone columns.

[2][3] Just before his death, Cheval received recognition from figures including André Breton, Bernard Buffet, Robert Doisneau, and Pablo Picasso.

In 1958, Ado Kyrou produced Le Palais idéal, a short film about Cheval's palace.

Picasso drew him as a twisted, hybrid-like creature (or beast), carved with the initials of the French postal service (P.T.T.)

In the drawing, Picasso took a humorous route, sketching Cheval's body in the shape of a horse and his head that of a bird.

[11] In 2018 Will Varley included the song "The Postman" about Cheval and the Palais Idéal on his studio album Spirit of Minnie.