Jacques Ignace Hittorff

Jacques Ignace Hittorff or, in German, Jakob Ignaz Hittorff (, ) (Cologne, 20 August 1792 – 25 March 1867) was a German-born French architect who combined advanced structural use of new materials, notably cast iron, with conservative Beaux-Arts classicism in a career that spanned the decades from the Restoration to the Second Empire.

Biography After serving an apprenticeship to a mason in his native city, he went in 1810 to Paris, and studied for some years at the Académie des Beaux-Arts while working concurrently as a draughtsman for Charles Percier. At the Académie, he was a favourite pupil of the government architect François-Joseph Bélanger, who employed him in the construction of one of the first cast-iron constructions in France, the cast-iron and glass dome of the grain market, Halle au Blé (1808–13). In 1814, Bélanger appointed Hittorff his principal inspector on construction sites. Succeeding Bélanger as government architect in 1818, Hittorff designed many important public and private buildings in Paris and also in the south of France. From 1819 to 1830, in collaboration with Jean-François-Joseph Lecointe he directed the royal fêtes and ceremonials, which the two architects inherited from Bélanger. Hittorff also designed a new building for the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique with Lecointe.

After making architectural tours in Germany, England, Italy and Sicily, Hittorff published the result of his Sicilian observations in Architecture antique de la Sicile (3 volumes, 1826–1830; revised, 1866–1867), and also in Architecture moderne de la Sicile (1826–1835).

One of his important discoveries was that colour had been employed in ancient Greek architecture, a subject which he especially discussed in Architecture polychrome chez les Grecs (1830) and in Restitution du temple d'Empédocle à Sélinonte (1851). In accordance with the doctrines enunciated in these works, he was in the habit of making colour an important feature in most of his architectural designs.

Hittorff was part of the team that designed the Grand Hôtel du Louvre in Paris, which opened in 1855 in time for the Exposition Universelle. He worked on this project with Alfred Armand (1805–88), Auguste Pellechet (1829-1903) and Charles Rohault de Fleury (1801–75).