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).

**The place Dauphine statue 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).

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Next,

At the last royal place, change begins