It was originally owned by the archbishops of Sens. The building is in between late Gothic and early Renaissance style, and now houses the Forney Art Library.

Originally known as the Place Royale, the Place des Vosges was built by Henry IV from 1605 to 1612. A true square (140 m x 140 m), it embodied the first European program of royal city planning. It was built on the site of the Hotel des Tournelles and its gardens: at a tournament at the Tournelles, a royal residence, Henri II was wounded and died. Catherine de Medicis had the Gothic pile demolished, and it was removed to the Louvre. Cardinal Richelieu had an equestrian bronze of Louis XIII erected in the center . The original was melted down in the Revolution; the present version, begun in 1818 by Louis Dupaty and completed in 1825. The square was renamed in 1799 when the departement of the Vosges became the first to pay taxes supporting a campaign of the Revolutionary army. The Restoration returned the old royal name, but the short-lived Second Republic restored the revolutionary one in 1848.#Famous residents include Mme de Sevigne was born at No. 1bis and Victor Hugo Lived at number 6 from 1832 - 1848, and is now a museum devoted to his memory

In 1548, Jacques des Ligneris, President of the Parliament of Paris, ordered the construction of the mansion that came to be known as the Hotel Carnavalet; construction was completed about 1560. In 1578, the widow of Francois de Kernevenoy, later known as Carnavalet, purchased the building. In 1654, the mansion was bought by Claude Boisleve, who commissioned the well-known architect, Francois Mansart, to make extensive renovations. Madame de Sevigne, famous for her letter-writing, lived in the Hotel Carnavalet from 1677 until her death in 1696. In the courtyard, a magnificent sculpture of Louis XIV, the Sun King, greets the visitor. The Carnavalet houses about 2,600 paintings, 20,000 drawings, 300,000 engravings and 150,000 photographs, 2,000 modern sculptures and 800 pieces of furniture, thousands of ceramics, many decorations, models and reliefs, signs, thousands of coins, countless items, many of them souvenirs of famous characters, and thousands of archeological fragments.