The Hôtel du Parc is the most historically significant building in Vichy — and arguably one of the most charged addresses in modern French history. From 1940 to 1944, it served as the seat of the Vichy regime: Marshal Pétain had his private quarters here, his ministers worked from nearby hotels that had been requisitioned as ministries, and the decisions that defined France's wartime collaboration with Nazi Germany were made in these rooms. The building itself is handsome and unremarkable — a large Edwardian hotel of the kind Vichy accumulated in quantity during its spa heyday — which only deepens the unease.
The hotel is now private apartments and cannot be entered, but the exterior is worth seeing and contemplating. A plaque records the building's wartime role. The surrounding streets form the core of the WWII historical circuit that the city has developed: the nearby Hôtel des Ambassadeurs (also on this circuit) housed the German armistice commission, and a dozen other buildings within a few blocks served specific government functions. The contrast between the buildings' Belle Époque elegance and what happened inside them is Vichy's central paradox, and standing here makes it concrete in a way that no museum exhibit can quite replicate.