Founder of the Crédit Mobilier, Raffaele financed many of the major construction projects of the second half of the 19th century: railroads in Austria, Latin America, Portugal and France (the Paris-Lyon-Marseille line), the digging of the Fréjus tunnel and the Suez Canal, the Paris buildings designed by Baron Haussmann... Three years after the fall of Napoleon III (1870), the Duchess proposed that the Count of Paris take up residence at the Rue de Varenne.