Hôtel Pams

Hôtel Pams
Inner courtyard with statue of Venus
Location within France
General information
Type	Mansion (Hôtel particulier)
Classification	Monument historique (1989)
Address	18 rue Emile-Zola
Town or city	Perpignan, Languedoc-Roussillon
Country	France
Coordinates	42°41′52″N 2°53′54″E / 42.697900°N 2.898311°E / 42.697900; 2.898311Coordinates: 42°41′52″N 2°53′54″E / 42.697900°N 2.898311°E / 42.697900; 2.898311
Owner	City of Perpignon
Renovating team
Architect	Léopold Carlier

The Hôtel Pams is a mansion in Perpignan, Pyrénées-Orientales, France. It was built between 1852 and 1872 by Pierre Bardou, one of the founders of the JOB cigarette paper company, then transformed in the 1890s into an elegant mansion by his son-in-law Jules Pams, a politician and amateur art-lover. It illustrates the artistic taste of the wealthy bourgeois at the turn of the 20th century. Today the building is owned by the city of Perpignan, and is only occasionally open to the public.

Pierre Bardou (1826–92) and his father Jean Bardou founded the JOB cigarette paper company, whose name is taken from Jean Bardou's initials. Pierre Bardou bought several houses in Perpignan on the Rue Émile Zola between 1852 and 1872, where he built workshops lit by a magnificent skylight adjacent to his home, which was enlarged to become a mansion. In practice the factory and the private space were not clearly separated. Pierre's wife, Léonie Amiel, died in 1871 leaving three children. His sister-in-law, Henriette Amiel, moved into the mansion on 18 rue Saint-Sauveur in Perpignan to care for them. In 1888 the politician Jules Pams married Jeanne Bardou. Jeanne was Pierre Bardou's youngest child, and would inherit the property. The Pams' lived in the house. While Pierre Bardou was an enthusiastic collector of "curiosities", Jules Pams was an enlightened amateur and patron of contemporary art, and in effect became Bardou's artistic adviser.

After Pierre Bardou-Job died in 1892 Pams commissioned the architect and designer Léopold Carlier to remodel the mansion to his taste. The renovation in 1894–97 added gold, marble and onyx throughout, with marquetry furniture. The paintings were by Paul Gervais, a fashionable artist at the time. Gervais decorated the casinos in Monaco and Nice and the Capitole in Toulouse. His paintings celebrate seductive women, love, and the virtues of civilization.

The Pams' were childless, but Henriette Amiel stayed in the house and looked after Pierre Michel Bardou (1887–1937), son of Jeanne's brother Justin Bardou (1860–1930). The "Hôtel Pams" became the social focus of the wealthy elite of the city. Jules Pams used the left wing as his private house and the right wing for receiving visitors. By the turn of the 20th century the Hôtel Pams was a large private museum, rivaling Perpignan's public Musée des Beaux-Arts Hyacinthe Rigaud. Jules Pams was administrator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts. Pams' wife Jeanne died in 1916. In 1918 he married again, to Marguerite Holtzer. Pams died in 1930. In 1946 Marguerite sold the building to the city of Perpignan.