Michel-Robert Penchaud

The son of Robert-Louis Penchaud, a provincial architect of Poitou and grandson of a mason who died in Paris, in 1756, his forced enrollment in the Armée de l'Ouest during the Revolution interrupted his studies.

He was soon employed as a draughtsman by the Conseil des Bâtiments civils and participated in numerous public competitions organised by the Ministry of the Interior.

In 1803, A.-C. Thibaudeau, the prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhône, named him to the post of architect to the City of Marseille, with as his first grand civil project, the glasshouses of the botanical garden.

During this period of official ostracism at Marseille he was kept occupied from Paris by the Ministry of the Interior, which commissioned him to act as arbitrator in works in Languedoc and to prepare preliminary studies for the projected restoration of monuments of Roman antiquity in the Midi: the Flavian Bridge at Saint-Chamas, remains at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, the Maison Carrée of Nîmes, the Roman temple at Vernègues, the amphitheatre of Arles.

Penchaud occupied these double posts, in the city and the département, resisting temptations to be drawn to the larger sphere of patronage in Paris, until his death in 1833.