STRAIGHT STREETS AND MONARCHY

AT MONARCHY'S HEIGHT, ALL STRAIGHT STREETS LEAD TO SYMBOLS OF ROYALTY

(TOWARD 1600-1750)  

They are:  

• Those that lead to royal places, at the center of which is an equestrian statue of the reigning king (place Dauphine excepted).

The model of place des Vosges

• The arch at Saint-Martin gate

Zoom

A straight street zooms towards it from a fairground (where the Eastern Station is now).

• At Versailles and what was meant as Louis XIV's mausoleum three straight streets converge: The next page explains. 

• A swan song of the Ancien Regime: the wide, straight street at the new toll gate is called place du Trône [Throne] (now place de la Nation) to recall Louis XIV's royal entry, which took shape and began there. The street that unites it with Paris is straight.

For more information / zoom

It was built in 1787. The Revolution breaks out in 1789...

# # #

There are no exceptions. Even the church Saint-Paul Saint-Louis, built toward 1630 to glorify the monarchy kingship but is not a symbol of it, is off-center — one reaches it by a street that curves:

# # #

Toward 1750, there's a change:

Straight streets lead to
a church (the Panthéon, 1758), 

and a theater (the Odéon, 1779).

Royalty weakens. 

*     *     *

Next,
Napoleon's tomb:

Straight streets lead to a sepulcher. Whose?