It all started in April 1879 when Ferdinand Cheval, a country postman, stumbled upon a strange stone. This led to 33 years of perseverance and dedication in building his ideal palace, alone in his garden, using only nature, postcards and pictures in magazines as inspiration.
Unique in the world, the Ideal Palace has inspired artists for over a century. Independent from any artistic trend, built with no architectural rules, the Ideal Palace has been admired by the Surrealists and is considered as a work of outsider art. It was classified as a Historical Monument in 1969 by the French Minister of Culture at that time, André Malraux, as Naïve Art."