Place De La Concorde

On several of our June visits, we happened by or through the Place de la Concorde, one of Paris' most famous scenes. It's a large old square with many monuments and much history. Long story short is that Louis XV wanted a big city square like France's other cities were developing (to be named Place Louis XV, of course; with an equestrian statue of himself, etc.) and chose this spot between the proposed Madeleine church and the National Assembly and also between the Tuileries and the beginning of the (now) Champs Elysees. The Revolutionaries of the 1790s renamed it Place de la Revolution and executed Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Danton, and eventually Robespierre there. Such cooler heads as remained renamed the square Place de la Concorde, hoping to move on from the Revolution. After Napoleon, it briefly became Place Louis XVI, but another revolution came along, the 1830 one, and it became Place de la Concorde once again. And so it has remained. Also the site of some major traffic jams.

Helpful aerial view; Madeleine upper left, Tuileries right, across the
river, the National Assembly, Champs Elysees, left

The Luxor Obelisk, with the Hotel de Crillon (left) and the Hotel
de la Marine (right); next post...

Plan from the time of Louis XV

Helpfully-labeled overhead view

And now just a few shots on the ground

Hotel Crillon in the background; also the monument
to the city of Rouen

Closer up of the obelisk, a gift from Egypt in the 1830s

The Fountain of Rivers, one of two grand fountains

Closer up with obelisk

Many monumental sculptures around...this, the Horse Tamer,
by Guillame Coustou

Monument to the city of Brest, on the spot where the
guillotine stood...