Place des Vosges

Paris's oldest square

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The Place des Vosges is Paris's oldest (and some say most beautiful) square. It is located in le Marais, and is part of the 3rd and 4th arrondissements of Paris.

Place des Vosges

Originally known as the Place Royale, the Place des Vosges was built by Henri IV from 1605 to 1612. A true square (140 m x 140 m), it was the first program of royal city planning, 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 pile demolished and moved to the Louvre.

Place des Vosges

The Place des Vosges 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. 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 personnage has ever lived in the aristocratic square. The Place des Vosges and subsequent developments of Paris created a suitable urban background for the French aristocracy.

Before the square was completed Henri 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, 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 was replaced in 1818. 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 Restauration returned the old royal name, but the Commune of 1870 restored the revolutionary one.

Today the square is planted with clipped lindens set in grass and gravel.