They saw him picking up stones and laughed at him: 33 years later he built a palace with them and inspired the world

The story of Ferdinand Cheval is magnificent. So magnificent that it is impossible to cover in a few lines. It involves a poor postman, an impossible castle, has a subplot of visions and a hypnotic tomb. How can we tell thirty-three years of walking and collecting stones in search of a partially unknown destination?

The mind of the “facteur” Cheval, of the postman Cheval, is unknown. Just as Akira Kurosawa and the avant-garde filmed their dreams, Cheval made art with visions of him. And he never realized that with his magnum opera he planted the seed of surrealism in Hauterives.

Cheval’s creation will be revealed as the paragraphs go by. The setting: the hills of the Drôme, a French site closer to Monaco than to Paris. The protagonist: the aforementioned postman Cheval. Starting year: 1879. Starting cause: a stumbling block.

stone by stone

Ferdinando, who worked as a postman throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, had an unshakable routine. He knew his 32 kilometers by heart. Have you seen the scene in Relentless Pursuit 2 where Liam Neeson’s character memorizes a blindfolded car ride? Well, Cheval could do it perfectly with his postal tour.

One day the postman dreamed. He dreamed of a medieval temple and drew it as soon as he got up. It was one of many visions of him. Visions that deluded from time to time communicated to his neighbors, causing them laughter that was not very fraternal.

That same day, doing his work intoxicated by the nocturnal revelation, Cheval tripped over a stone. It was the moment of enlightenment, of the second revelation after hours. In that moment he knew he was going to do something with her that he had never seen before..

Ferdinand held the rock which made him fall. He took her home and with her began her utopia. He was not an artist, he was a simple postal worker, but that afternoon when his wife saw him place the object in the center of their garden, something in the nature of his profession changed.

Was postman Cheval a fool or had he finally figured out what to do with his visions? The day after he tripped over the stone, in the middle of his working day, Ferdinand picked up another stone from the ground and carried it to his patio. He did the same thing the next day, and the next … and the next.

First he used his pockets, then a basket, then a wheelbarrow. Cheval brought rocks home every afternoon. Those visions he never understood were materializing into something he years later he would call.

The stones he picked up he put in rows on the side of the road leading to his house. Passersby laughed. They really believed in the first option of the question – they thought the postman was crazy.

While Cheval gathered his things in his garden, the visions continued to do their job. Everything he saw he carved on the stones he collected. Everything he read about other cultures too, why not, went to his rocky dump.

In 1896 his work consumed him. He left mail delivery and focused on his life mission, his own palace of dreams.

Thirty-three years later, the stone routine had completely obliterated his postal routine. In 1912, Cheval had built a mansion out of all the stones he had collected on that path he knew so well..

The Ideal Palace is like a tower of Babel. A Borgian construction in which all cultures converge. There is a mosque, a gallery, a tunnel, a Hindu temple, an Egyptian tomb, a barbarian tower, a Swiss hut.

Your creation includes your manifesto. Don’t let the curious misunderstand your message: “By making this rock I want to test what will create. You are nothing but dust, only your soul is important.

Also save math fanatics from accounts. “1879-1912: 10,000 days, 93,000 hours, 33 years of sacrifice. If there is someone more stubborn than me, let him get to work ”, we read on one of the stones of his palace.

Once his structure was finished – 26 meters long by 14 wide and 10 high – Cheval, encouraged, thought about his next construction. His wife, who was the one who made him finish the palace begging him to rest, gave him pleasure only for a little while.

From Hauterives to eternity

His next target was the place of eternal rest. Ferdinand wanted his tomb and that of his wheelbarrow, his “companion in pain”, to be inside his stone palace and for this he spent another two years building them with the same method.

The tomb he made inside his castle lost its validity when French law did not allow him to go there once he died. They told him that his grave must be on consecrated ground, that is, in an ordinary cemetery. “Oh yeah?” Cheval thought surely before doubling down on his new goal.

It took another eight years for the postman of seventy and eighty short years to bring his grave to the Hauterives cemetery. Made the passage of him who knows where, the “facteur” is dead.

The museum of obstinacy

In 1969 the Ideal Palace was recognized as national monument of “naive art” by the then Minister of Culture, André Malraux. Cheval found in André Bretonthe greatest exponent of surrealism, Pablo Picasso e Max Ernst three of his biggest fans.

Today anyone can visit the postman’s temple. Since 2014 it has been considered a museum. There, in addition to the mere space, the wheelbarrow with which Cheval collected the stones and the rest of the materials and some tools he used are exhibited.

There is also an information center nearby, a gift shop, and tours, which are offered with moderately cheap bookings for both adults and children, include a tour involving the cemetery where his grave is located.

The Ideal Palace, the center of obstinacy, is there waiting for those who see it, or simply know its history, to feel a little better.