The architect of the Palais-Cardinal, Jacques Lemercier,…

The architect of the Palais-Cardinal, Jacques Lemercier, had also received a commission to build a château and a surrounding town in Indre-et-Loire; the project has culminated in the construction of the Château Richelieu and the town of Richelieu.

To the château, Richelieu has added one of the largest art collections in Europe and the largest collection of ancient Roman sculpture in France.

(The heavily resurfaced and restored Richelieu Bacchus will continue to be admired by neoclassical artists.)

Among his three hundred paintings by moderns, most notably, he owns Leonardo's Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, The Family of the Virgin by Andrea del Sarto, the two famous Bacchanales of Nicolas Poussin, as well as paintings by Veronese and Titian, and Diana at the Bath by Rubens, for which he is so glad to pay the artist's heirs three thousand écus, that he makes a gift to Rubens' widow of a diamond-encrusted watch.

His marble portrait bust by Bernini is not considered a good likeness and has been banished to a passageway.