Under Napoléon as Premier Consul, the Tribunat was established there in a hall since razed. The Bourse de Commerce succeeded the Tribunat. Then the Orléans regained possession of the palace and Prince Louis-Philippe went thence to the hôtel de Ville, to return Roi des Français.
The galleries and the façade of the portico of the second court date from the first half of the nineteenth century. The upheaval of 1848 and the reign of Napoléon III resulted in further changes for the Palais-Royal. It became for a time Palais-National, and was subsequently put to military uses. Then King Jérôme took up his abode there, and was succeeded by his son Prince Napoléon. The little Gothic Chapel where Princess Clothilde was wont to pray serves now as a lumberroom. Prince Victor, the husband of Princess Clémentine of Belgium, was born at the Palais-Royal in 1862.
The galleries surrounding the garden are brimful of historic associations. Besides the clubs, noted Revolutionary clubs which met in the cafés, notorious gambling-houses existed there.
Galerie Montpensier, Nos. 7-12, is the ancient Café Corazza, the famous rendezvous of the Jacobins, frequented later by Buonaparte, Talma, etc.; 36, once Café des Mille Colonnes, was so named from the multiple reflection in surrounding mirrors of its twenty pillars. At 50 we see the former Café Hollandais, which had as its sign a guillotine; at 57-60 the Café Foy, before the doors of which Desmoulins harangued the people crowding there.
Galerie Beaujolais, No. 103--now a bar and dancing-hall--is the ancient Café des Aveugles, where in the sous-sol an orchestra played, formed entirely of blind men from the Quinze-Vingts, the hospital at first close by then removed to Rue Charenton, while the Sans-Culottes met and plotted. The mural portraits of notable Revolutionists seen there is modern work.
Galerie de Valois, Nos. 119, 120, 121, Ombres Chinoises de Séraphin (1784-1855) and Café Mécanique formed practically the first Express-Bar. At 177, was formerly the cutler's shop where Charlotte Corday bought the knife to slay Marat.
Of the three streets made by the mercantile-minded duc d'Orléans the walls of two still stand undisturbed. In Rue de Valois we see, at No. 1, the ancient pavilion and passage leading from the Place de Valois, formerly the Cour des Fontaines, where the inhabitants of Palais-Royal drew their water; at 6-8 the restaurant, Boeuf à la mode, built by Richelieu as hôtel Mélusine; at 10, the façade of hôtel de la Chancellerie d'Orléans; at 20, hôtel de la Fontaine-Martel, inhabited for a year by Voltaire, 1732-33. In Rue de Beaujolais we find the theatre which began as Théâtre des Beaujolais, was for several years towards the close of the eighteenth century a theatre of Marionnettes, and is now Théâtre Palais-Royal. Then Rue de Montpensier--1784--shows us interesting old windows, ironwork, etc.; Rue Montesquieu--1802--runs where the Collège des Bons-Enfants once stood. The Mother-house of the Restaurants Duval, so well known in every quarter of Paris, at No. 6, is on the site of the ancient Salle Montesquieu, once a popular dancing saloon, then a draper's shop with the sign of "Le Pauvre Diable" where the founder of the world-known Bon Marché was in his youth a salesman.