Mailman spends 33 years building this palace from pebbles found on his mail route

Ferdinand Cheval was walking his usual mail route when his foot caught on a stone that sent him stumbling. When he turned to look, the strange rock reminded him of a dream he had in which he has built a palace. It was sandstone that was shaped by water and hardened by the hands of time. He went back to the same place and found more stones, each more beautiful than the last, gathered them together and was overcome with joy. He said to himself: “since Nature is willing to do the sculpture, I will do the masonry and the architecture.”

For the next thirty years, Cheval took a wheelbarrow along his daily mail route, collecting stones and carrying them home to build the Palais Idéal. He worked long hours at night by the light of a kerosene lamp, taking twenty years alone to build the outer walls.

The Palace is located in Hauterives, Southeastern France, and has inspired artists for over a century. It was a DIY project, bound to no architectural rules and independent from any artistic trend, proving that outsider artwork is often the most pure.