Carter builds palace from stones over 33 years

In 1879, Ferdinand Cheval, a French postman in Hauterives, began collecting stones he found during his rural mail route. Over the next 33 years, he used these stones to build a remarkable palace in his garden.

Cheval, from a humble farming family and without formal training in architecture, gathered materials during his daily rounds, transporting them back to his home. He worked on the palace after his postal duties, often at night, assembling the stones without a conventional architectural plan.

The resulting Palais Idéal blended elements of Hindu temples, medieval castles, and Swiss chalets, inspired in part by pictures he saw in magazines and postcards delivered on his route. Cheval began the project after finding an unusually shaped stone that sparked a long-held dream. He finished the palace in 1912 at the age of 76.

When French law prevented him from being buried inside his creation, Cheval spent another eight years building a mausoleum in the Hauterives cemetery, where he was eventually interred in 1924. Initially met with skepticism from locals, the palace later gained recognition from artists like Pablo Picasso and was designated a historic monument of France in 1969.