Charles-Auguste Questel was a member of the Commission des Monuments historiques from 1848 to 1879. Architect of the Civil Buildings of Versailles in 1849, he became Inspector General in 1862 and a member of the Institute in 1871. He restored the church of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard (1840), the theatre and amphitheatre of Arles (1841-1946), the church of Saint-Maurice in Vienna (1842), that of Saint-Philibert de Tournus (1845-1848). He was also in charge of the Roman monuments of Nîmes, the Pont du Gard, with the help of Laisné, the Temple of Augustus and Silvia and the Church of Saint Peter.
He was a diocesan architect from Nîmes, Marseille, Ajaccio. Among its buildings we can mention: the Saint-Paul church in Nîmes, the Sainte-Anne hospital in Paris, the Grenoble library.
Jean-Charles Laisné attended the School of Fine Arts (class of 1836) and followed the teaching of the architects Huvé and Lenormand. In 1844, he won a second Grand Prix de Rome with a project for a palace for the Paris Academy. Very quickly, he turned to restoration issues: as an architect attached to the Historic Monuments Commission, he worked with Questel on the restoration of the Pont du Gard (1855-1858) and with Viollet-le-Duc on the restoration of Saint-Just de Narbonne. He was finally appointed a member of the Historic Monuments Commission in 1871.
Left behind, he also built many civil constructions: the Janson de Sailly high school, the cour de cassation and the Ecole supérieure de Pharmacie, a building at 24 rue La Bruyère in Paris and a castle at Cussy in Charolais; he succeeded Abadie and Daumet for the construction of the Sacré-Coeur basilica.
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