"PLACES" STAY ROYAL

THE SYMBOLS AT THE CENTER OF ALL IMPORTANT PLACES

EVOLVE TO EVOKE THE POWER OF CHANGING REGIMES

The equestrian statue of the king on pont Neuf bridge is their common origin.

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At place de l'Étoile, the Arc de Triomphe exalts the victories of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic armies. Napoleon began it, the Restauration kings continued it to glorify an invasion of Spain, and Louis-Philippe finished and inaugurated it.

He hoped that making the Invalides the Emperor's sepulcher and completing the Arc (both in 1836) would connect him with Napoleon and so unite the people around his illegitimate rule (please scroll down).

Internet, photographe non nommé

At place de l'Opéra the monument itself is the symbol, for it represents the regime (the Second Empire in the 1860's).

Claude Abron

An enclosed space, straight, converging streets and homogeneous architecture.  

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At place Vendôme, La Commune destroys the column built to honor Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz (battle 1805, original column 1807) for its militarism (on May 16, 1871)...

"A monument to barbarity, a symbol of brute force and false glory, the victors' permanent insult to the vanquished [...]. The Vendôme column will be demolished." 

 -- Decree of Destruction 

Zoom

The painter Gustave Courbet said the figures, which of about the same size, look like "gingerbread men."

 Preparing for Demolition, Last Measures by Bruno Braquehais / zoom

Memories of la Commune: The Vendome Column Torn Down, anonymous, 1871 / zoom

The Vendome Column Demolished by Bruno Braquehais /zoom

It was supposed to have been made from cannons seized from the enemy, but Communards found only a thin layer of bronze.

Internet, photographer not named

We see a copy. 

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Although set between the river and a street the Grand Courtyard of the Louvre cannot draw converging routes...

• The space is public, the architecture homogeneous...

Pinterest

...and the Pyramid evokes the State:

Monique Wells

Faced with an outcry against putting the contemporary work in the ancestral setting, the "Sun King of Socialism" — President Mitterand —  said, "I want it!" and the opposition answered the equivalent of "Oui, Sire" (in 1984).

President Macron celebrated his electoral victory with the Pyramid in the background (in 2017):

The royal imprint,

a current event.

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Next,
The violent imagery of victors on horseback