| Pascal Coste | |
| Birth Name: | Xavier Pascal Coste |
| Birth Date: | 1787 11, df=yes |
| Birth Place: | Marseille, Kingdom of France |
| Death Place: | Marseille, French Third Republic |
| Resting Place: | Cimetière Saint-Pierre, Marseille |
| Native Name Lang: | fr |
| Resting Place Coordinates: | 43.2911°N 5.4125°W |
| Nationality: | French |
Xavier Pascal Coste (26 November 1787 – 8 February 1879) was a French architect. He was at one time a personal architect for Muhammad Ali Pasha. As a seasoned traveller, his travels to Qajar Iran, aroused the interest of King Louis Philippe I and that gained Coste the post of chief architect of Marseille in 1844.
Coste was born in Marseille, where his father was one of the leading joiners. Showing intellectual and artistic promise, Coste began his studies in the studio of Michel-Robert Penchaud, architect of the département and the municipalité. In 1814, he was accepted into the French: [[Beaux-Arts de Paris|École des Beaux-Arts]]|italic=no in Paris. His time in Paris was a pivotal one in his life—there he met the geographer Edme-François Jomard, who put him in touch with the viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha, who took Coste as his personal architect in 1817.
In 1825, Coste returned to France with an impressive series of drawings of the architecture of Cairo, but he soon went to Egypt once again at Ali's request, where Ali made him chief engineer for Lower Egypt. Coste remained there for four years, during which time he accumulated many sketches, but he reportedly found the Egyptian climate difficult and returned to France in 1829. He became a professor of architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, due in part to the links he had kept with Penchaud. He remained in this post until 1861, when he was one of the founding members of the intellectual centre known as the Athénée.In parallel with these activities, he travelled around France and to Germany, Belgium and Tunisia, where he produced several authoritative works on architecture; his architecture arabe (1827) earned him a place on the French king's embassy to the Persian Shah. In Iran, Coste and the painter Eugène Flandin were authorized to visit Iranian Azerbaijan, Isfahan, Shiraz and the ruins of Ecbatana, Bistun, Taq-e Bostan, Kangavar, Pasargadae and Persepolis, where he made many sketches. On his return via Baghdad, he saw the ruins of Seleucia, Ctesiphon and Babylon. He continued via Nineveh, to which the archaeologist Paul-Émile Botta was also travelling to begin his excavations.His Middle East journey aroused the interest of Louis Philippe I and gained Coste the post of chief architect of Marseille in 1844. In 1846, the president of the Chambre de Commerce, M. Luce, commissioned from Coste the Bourse on Marseille's Canebière. Coste was also the originator of two other architectural projects in Marseille—the construction of the faculté aux allées de Meilhan, and a museum with château d'eau at Longchamps. He also began construction on the abattoir d'Arenc, only completed in 1851.
A tireless traveller, even aged over 80, he visited Spain, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Russia and Italy. He left 30 albums of drawings on his death, now held at the Bibliothèque de Marseille, though some of his essays were never published. Towards the end of his life, he was made an officer of the Légion d'honneur. He died aged 92 and was buried at the cimetière Saint-Pierre in Marseille.
See also: List of paintings and plots by Pascal Coste and Eugène Flandin.