Elodie Pauwels

Jacques Cœur Palace

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Bourges is located in the middle of France, where Jacques Cœur was born at the end of the fourteenth century. Among other duties, he was a merchant in charge of trading goods between his country and the Levant under King Charles VII.

Although he never lived there, Cœur ordered the construction in Bourges of an avant-garde gothic-style imposing hôtel particulier (now called palace). He chose scallop shells and hearts (in French: “Saint-Jacques” and “Coeur”) as heraldry, which can be seen at many places on and in the edifice. His motto “A vaillans cuers riens impossible” means “To a valiant heart, nothing is impossible.”

Jacques Cœur’s story has been novelized by a French author, Jean-Christophe Rufin, a Bourges native himself.