Ferdinand Cheval was a French postman who spent thirty-three years of his life building Le Palais idéal in Hauterives. The Palace is regarded as an extraordinary example of naïve art architecture.
“I was walking very fast when my foot caught on something that sent me stumbling a few meters away, I wanted to know the cause. In a dream I had built a palace, a castle or caves, I cannot express it well... I told no one about it for fear of being ridiculed and I felt ridiculous myself. Then fifteen years later, when I had almost forgotten my dream, when I wasn’t thinking of it at all, my foot reminded me of it…. I found more stones, even more beautiful, I gathered them together on the spot and was overcome with delight... It was a sandstone shaped by water and hardened by the power of time. It becomes as hard as pebbles. It represents a sculpture so strange that it is impossible for man to imitate, it represents any kind of animal, any kind of caricature. I said to myself: since nature is willing to do the sculpture, I will do the masonry and the architecture.”