ROYAL "PLACES" MULTIPLY

PARIS HAS FIVE:* THEY FOLLOW THE MODEL OF PLACE DES VOSGES, WITH AT THEIR CENTER AN EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF THE REIGNING KING** 

* Place des Vosges and place Dauphine (toward 1600), place des Victoires and place Vendôme (toward 1685), place de la Concorde (1755).

* That of place Dauphine is on a bridge.

 

       Claude Abron

 At place des Victoires, the model is taken up exactly.

Diaporama, Louvre

At place Vendôme, the statue looks out over the buildings: no one is above the king.  

Place de Concorde is described on the next page.

In the provinces the Revolution cancels construction plans,

but some have been built already

Bordeaux 

Rennes

Reims: exceptionally, the king stands.

Abroad, 18th-century capitals take up the Parisian model

Nancy in 1751, when Lorraine is still independent

Internet, photographer not named

Copenhagen

          Palace square by Vasily Sadovnikov, toward 1847 / zoom

Saint-Petersburg

 Adopting places was due to France's influence —

"He spoke the refined French in which our grandfathers

 not only spoke but thought..."*

-- Page 1 of War and Peace

*It was the language conspirators used when they announced to Tsar Paul of Russia that he was an intolerable despot and was overthrown. Then they killed him.

-- The Romanovs, 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2016 (French ed. p.350).

*     *     * 

Next,

At the last place, change begins