The Place des
Vosges is the oldest planned square in
Paris. It is located in the
Marais district, and it straddles the dividing-line between the 3rd
and 4th arrondissements of Paris.
Originally known as the
Place Royale, the
Place des Vosges was built by
Henri IV from 1605 to
1612. A true square (
140 m × 140 m), it embodied the first
European program of royal city planning. It was built on the site of the
Hôtel des Tournelles and its gardens: at a tournament at the Tournelles, a royal residence,
Henri II was wounded and died.
Catherine de Medicis had the
Gothic complex demolished, and she removed to the
Louvre.
The Place des Vosges, inaugurated in 1612 with a grand carrousel to celebrate the wedding of
Louis XIII and
Anne of Austria, is the prototype of all the residential squares of
European cities that were to come. What was new about the Place Royale in 1612 was that the housefronts were all built to the same design, probably by
Baptiste du Cerceau, of red brick with strips of stone quoins over vaulted arcades that stand on square pillars.
The steeply-pitched blue slate roofs are pierced with discreet small-paned dormers above the pedimented dormers that stand upon the cornices. Only the north range was built with the vaulted ceilings that the "galleries" were meant to have. Two pavilions that rise higher than the unified roofline of the square center the north and south faces and offer access to the square through triple arches. Though they are designated the
Pavilion of the
King and of the
Queen, no royal personage has ever lived in the aristocratic square. The Place des Vosges initiated subsequent developments of Paris that created a suitable urban background for the
French aristocracy.
Before the square was completed, Henri IV ordered the
Place Dauphine to be laid out.
Within a mere five-year period the king oversaw an unmatched building scheme for the ravaged medieval city: additions to the
Louvre Palace, the
Pont Neuf, and the Hôpital
Saint Louis as well as the two royal squares.
Cardinal Richelieu had an equestrian bronze of Louis XIII erected in the center (there were no garden plots until 1680). The original was melted down in the
Revolution; the present version, begun in 1818 by
Louis Dupaty and completed by
Jean-Pierre Cortot, replaced it in 1825. The square was renamed in 1799 when the département of the Vosges became the first to pay taxes supporting a campaign of the
Revolutionary army.
The Restoration returned the old royal name, but the short-lived
Second Republic restored the revolutionary one in
1848.
Today the square is planted with a bosquet of mature lindens set in grass and gravel, surrounded by clipped lindens.
- published: 15 Jun 2013
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