Rouen, Upper Normandy 76000

In a pedestrian street in the historic centre of Rouen, an apartment of over 300 m² on the first level of a listed 18th-century hôtel particulier. The apartment belongs to a commonhold of six units at the start of a pedestrian street. A discreet carriage entrance with automated gates gives access to a first courtyard, which opens onto a large shared garden of mature trees and the parking spaces. Little about the building's plan has shifted since it was raised. It passed through several families of the Nobles of the Robe in the 18th century before coming, from 1829 to 1871, to Louis de Maupassant, grandfather of Guy de Maupassant the writer lodged here as a boy while attending the city's Jesuit college, now the Lycée Corneille. Older institutions have left their traces in the party walls nearby - the former Hôpital du Roy, the house of the Oratorian Fathers, the Hôpital Sainte-Barbe - in a finial-carved post, a stone cartouche of scrollwork and small masks, a surviving bell. A listing in the catalogue of historic monuments protects the façades and roofs. Rusticated pilasters divide the bays of the main range, and a baluster guardrail fronts those of the second level. Five dormers punctuate the deep eaves of the Angers-slate roof.