Place de la Concorde

The Place de la Concorde, is the largest place in Paris, it is situated along the Seine and separates the Tuilerie Gardens from the beginning of the Champs Elysees. Architect Jacques Ange Gabriel, started construction on behalf of Louis XV, in 1754, and was eventually completed in 1763. It was then named the Place Louis XV. The place was constructed in the form of octagon bordered by large moats, which have now long disappeared. The place was constructed to hold an equestrian statue of Louis XV that was commissioned by the city in 1748.

In 1792, during the French revolution, the statue of Louis XV was replaced by a another large statue called Liberte or freedom, and the square was renamed the Place de la Revolution. A guillotine was installed at the centre of the square and during the following couple of years, many people were beheaded here, including King Louis XVI, Marie Antionette, and eventually the revolutionary Robespierre. After the revolution the square was renamed several times, Place de la Concorde, Place Louis XV, Place Louis XVI, Place de la Chartre, until 1830, when it was once again named the Place de la Concorde.

At the north end, two magnificent identical stone buildings were constructed. Separated by the rue Royale, these remain among the best examples of architecture from that period. Initially they served as government offices, with the eastern one being the home of the French Naval Ministry. Shortly after its construction, the western building was made into the luxurious Hotel de Crillon, which is still operating today, this is here that Marie Antoinette spent afternoons relaxing and taking piano lessons. The hotel also served as the headquarters of the occupying German army during World War II.

In the 19th century the 3200 years old obelisk from the temple of Ramses II at Thebes, now modern day Luxor, was installed at the centre of the Place de la Concorde. It is a 23 meters tall monolith in pink granite and weighs approximately 230 tons. In 1831, it was offered by the Viceroy of Egypt to Louis Philippe. It was only one of 3 obelisks offered by the Viceroy, but only one ended up being transported to Paris. The obelisk is covered with hieroglyphs picturing the reign of pharaohs Ramses II and Ramses III. Pictures on the pedestal describe the transportation to Paris and its installation at the square in 1836. One story that is often told about the installation of the obelisk, is that during the final stage of its erection, it was found that due to the placement of the winches, they had met there mechanical limits before the obelisk was fully upright, then a voice out of an estimated 200,000 onlookers, shouted, "moisten the ropes". It was, it is claimed, a sailor who Knew that hemp ropes would shrink while drying.

Erected At each corner of the octagonal square stands statues that each represent a French city. Bordeaux, Brest, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Rouen and Strasbourg. They were installed in 1836 by Jacob Ignaz Hittorf, while he was redesigning the Place de la Concorde. That same year a bronze fountain, called La fontaine des Mers was added to the square. Later in 1839 a second fountain, the Elevation of the Maritime fountain, was installed. This fountain, like the first, was designed by Hittorf.

Palace of Versailles

Palace of Versailles

The Palace of Versailles is the central part of a complex that housed the French government, most notably its royalty, during the reigns of Louis XIV (France’s famed “Sun King”), Louis XV and Louis XVI. After the French Revolution in 1789, it ceased to be a permanent royal residence.

Located about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southwest of Paris, it is beside the settlement of Versailles. Before the construction of the palace by Louis XIV, this settlement was little more than a hamlet but by the time of the revolution it had a population of more than 60,000 people, making it one of the largest urban centers in France.

Before the revolution, the Versailles complex included the palace, gardens, a walled-in royal hunting ground, a smaller palatial structure known as the Grand (or Marble) Trianon and an estate used by Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI’s queen. Between the palace and the town there are also buildings that housed the war and foreign affairs ministries, residences for those not entitled to live in the palace, stables and a kennel, among other structures.

The palace was chock full of paintings and sculptures, ornately designed rooms (like the “Hall of Mirrors”) and even technological innovations — such as pressurized water fountains in its gardens that jetted water into the air — and an opera house with a mechanical device that allowed the orchestra pit to rise up to the stage, allowing it to be turned into a dance or banqueting hall.

Overall, the palace was built to impress. “Versailles is a mirage, a sumptuous and theatrical entertainment. It is also a manifestation of glory and power imposed to a great extent by art, luxury, and magnificence,” writes Valérie Bajou, a modern-day curator at Versailles, in her book "Versailles" (Abrams, 2012).

From hunting lodge to palace

The first thing that attracted France’s kings to Versailles was its prolific game. Louis XIII, who lived 1601-1643, bought up land, built a chateau and went on hunting trips. At the time, much of the land around Versailles was uncultivated allowing wild animals to flourish.

The chateau Louis XIII built was little more than a hunting lodge having enough space to house the king and a small entourage. It was the “Sun King,” Louis XIV (1638-1715), a ruler who chose the sun as his emblem and believed in centralized government with the king at its center, who would radically transform Versailles making it the seat of France’s government by the time of his death.

He ruled France for 72 years and in that time transformed Versailles by encompassing Louis XIII’s chateau with a palace that contained north and south wings, as well as nearby buildings housing ministries. A series of gardens, created in a formal style, stood to the west of the palace (one of them today is in the shape of a star) and contained sculptures as well as the pressurized fountains capable of launching water high into the air.

“From the outset Louis attached a supreme importance to these water effects. Their virtuosity formed the star turn of a tour of the gardens,” writes Tony Spawforth, a professor at Newcastle University, in his book "Versailles: A Biography of a Palace" (St. Martin’s Press, 2008). “The effects were the work of engineers whose machines made Versailles a hydraulic as much as an artistic wonder.” Unfortunately, Spawforth notes, problems supplying water meant that the fountains could only be turned on during special occasions.

In addition a grand canal, constructed to the west of the garden and running about a mile long, was used for naval demonstrations and had gondolas, donated by the Republic of Venice, manned by gondoliers.

As the French government moved into Versailles, and the king found himself swamped by work in his palace, he built himself the Grand (also called Marble) Trianon, a more modest palatial structure, about a mile (1.6 kilometers) to the northwest of the palace as a private retreat where only he and those invited could visit. Like the palace itself it had an abundant garden whose smells were said to overpower visitors

“The tuberoses drive us away from Trianon every evening,” wrote Madame de Maintenon in a letter dated Aug. 8, 1689. “The excess of fragrance causes men and women to feel ill.” (Source: Versailles official website)

Scholars have suggested a number of factors that led Louis XIV to build a great palace complex at Versailles and move the French government there. It’s been noted that by keeping the king’s residence some distance from Paris, it offered him protection from any civil unrest going on in the city. It also forced the nobles to travel to Versailles and seek lodging in the palace, something that impeded their ability to build up regional power bases that could potentially challenge the king.

Sparforth notes that the French Duke Saint-Simon (1675-1755) commented on how easy it was to see all the officials he needed because they were all located in one complex. Saint-Simon wrote that someone at Versailles “could see everyone he needed in the space of an hour,” something that would have taken much longer in Paris.

Inside the palace

Spawforth notes that the palace contained about 350 living units varying in size, from multi-room apartments to spaces about the size of an alcove. The size and location of the room a person got depended on their rank and standing with the king. While the crown prince (known as the dauphin) got a sprawling apartment on the ground floor, a servant may have nothing more than a space in an attic or a makeshift room behind a staircase. 

The bedroom of Louis XIV, built on the upper floor and located centrally along the east-west axis of the palace, was the most important room and was the location of two important ceremonies where the king would wake up (lever) and go to sleep (coucher) surrounded by his courtiers. The king also had a ceremony for putting on and taking off his hunting boots. “The room where the king slept became the nucleus of the residence and, therefore, of the kingdom,” Bajou writes.

The importance of the courtiers being at these ceremonies continued into the reigns of Louis XV and XVI. Spawforth notes that a courtier in 1784 wrote that “most of the people who come to the court are persuaded that, to make their way there, they must show themselves everywhere, be absent as little possible at the king’s lever, removal of the boots, and coucher, show themselves assiduously at the dinners of the royal family ... in short, must ceaselessly work at having themselves noticed.”

Complementing these court ceremonies was the beauty of the palace itself, which emphasized the achievements and power of the king. The king’s bedroom and apartment area were located close to the Hall of Mirrors. Spawforth writes that the hall has 30 tableaux that tell an “epic narrative” of what “Louis (XIV) as King of France aspired to be.”

Victory in battle features prominently in these narratives with one example showing Louis with his army crossing the Rhine River in 1672. “Hair streaming, dressed in Roman style and holding a thunderbolt like a projectile, Louis sits godlike on a silver chariot pushed by Hercules while riding roughshod over female personifications of nearby enemy towns.”

The design of the hall added to the effect. “Viewing was to be helped by the famous wall of mirrors, which diffuses the daylight, except above the windows, where the detail is shadowy.”

The Hall of Mirrors was flanked on its north side by the Salon of War, which has art depicting the king’s victory against a European coalition in a war that ran from 1688-1697, and on its south side by a Salon of Peace, which has art depicting the benefits of the forthcoming peace. 

The king had his throne in the “Apollo Salon” and worshiped in a royal chapel, which spanned two stories, which Bajou notes was built between 1699 and 1710. The power of the king once again figures prominently in the decoration of the chapel, “the iconography of the painted and sculptural decorations corresponds to a theological and political plan to demonstrate that the powers and duties of the monarch are given by divine right,” writes Bajou.

One interesting limit on the king’s power was with communion. Spawforth notes that both “Louis XIV and his successors were too pious to take communion during their adulteries.” Furthermore, when they committed adultery they had to cancel a ceremony they undertook in which they would touch people inflicted with scrofula and supposedly cure them. Spawforth said that canceling these ceremonies was considered “scandalous.”

Despite the richness of the palace, the kings had to make do with makeshift theaters up until 1768 when Louis XV allowed the building of the royal opera. It contained a mechanism that allowed the orchestra level to be raised to the stage allowing it to be used for dancing and banqueting. Spawforth notes that the opera required 3,000 candles to be burnt for opening night and was rarely used due to its cost and the poor shape of France’s finances.

Estate of Marie Antoinette

Near the Grand Trianon, the queen of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, created an estate for herself. She took over a building called the “Petit Trianon” and built a number of structures including a working farm (also called the “hamlet”), which provided the palace with fresh produce, and had a nearby house and small theater.

Some of the structures in the estate have a meaning that is more difficult to understand. She built a “Temple of Love” which modern-day curators say can be seen from her room in the Petit Trianon. It features a dome propped up by nearly a dozen columns covering a statue, which shows a depiction of “Cupid cutting his bow from the club of Hercules,” Bajou writes.  

Even stranger is the “grotto,” a cave, which Marie Antoinette had constructed for herself with a moss bed, which she could lie on. It had two entrances, prompting much speculation as to what went on in it.

American history at Versailles

Two key events in the American Revolution happened at Versailles. Benjamin Franklin, acting on behalf of a newly independent United States, negotiated a treaty with Louis XVI, which led to America getting critical support from the French military.

Spawforth notes that Louis XVI would have one of his inventions, a “Franklin chimney,” installed that produced less smoke than an ordinary fireplace. Franklin was also a keen observer at Versailles noting the presence of wooden booths (merchant stalls) in the Minister’s Court, just in front of the palace. These “ridiculous” structures “accord so little with the majesty of the place” he wrote.

Fittingly, the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the Revolutionary War, was signed on Sept. 3, 1783, at Versailles, close to the palace in the nearby foreign affairs building. Several decades later, when King Louis Philippe (reign 1830-1848) was turning Versailles into a museum, he would include a painting that depicts the siege of Yorktown, a decisive victory in the Revolutionary War in which the Americans and French cooperated against the British.

America would reciprocate in the 1920s when oil millionaire John D. Rockefeller Jr. paid to have the palace’s expansive roof restored, among other buildings. 

Versailles after the fall

After the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette would be stripped of his powers, brought to Paris and ultimately beheaded, the palace falling under the control of the new republican government.

Many of its furnishings were sold to help pay for the subsequent Revolutionary Wars. When Napoleon came to power, he had an apartment created for himself in the Grand Trianon, complete with a map room.

King Louis Philippe, in the museum he created, showcased different aspects of French history. The Battles Gallery can still be seen today with its modern-day keepers noting that the gallery’s art depicts every main French battle between the Battle of Tolbiac in A.D. 496 and the Battle of Wagram in 1809.

In the late 19th and 20th centuries, Versailles curators would convert many of the museum areas back into palace space, trying to show how they looked before the French Revolution.

Two more pivotal events would occur at Versailles in this post-revolutionary period. In 1871, after France had lost a war against Prussia, Kaiser Wilhelm I was proclaimed Emperor of Germany in the Hall of Mirrors, adding an extra layer of humiliation to the French defeat. For several years after this defeat, the situation in France was so bad that its Chamber of Deputies and Senate opted to meet at Versailles, rather than Paris, for reasons of safety.

In 1919, France would have its revenge, of sorts, when the Treaty of Versailles, which imposed reparations on Germany, was signed in the same hall. Although the treaty formally ended World War I, it has been argued by some that it helped pave the way for World War II. Even then, centuries after its modest start as a hunting lodge, events still took place at Versailles that ultimately helped shaped the world we live in today.

STONEHENGE

STONEHENGE

History of Stonehenge

Stonehenge is perhaps the most famous prehistoric monument in the world. Begun as a simple earthwork enclosure, it was built in several stages. The first monument was as an early form of henge monument, built about 5,000 years ago, where prehistoric people buried their cremated dead. The unique lintelled stone circle with its enormous sarsens and smaller bluestones was erected in the late Neolithic period around 2500 BC. Stonehenge remained important into the early Bronze Age, when many burial mounds were built nearby. Today Stonehenge, together with Avebury and other associated sites, forms the heart of a World Heritage Site with a unique and dense concentration of outstanding prehistoric monuments.

BEFORE STONEHENGE

The earliest structures known in the immediate area are four or five pits, three of which appear to have held large pine ‘totem-pole like’ posts erected in the Mesolithic period, between 8500 and 7000 BC. It is not known how these posts relate to the later monument of Stonehenge.

At this time, when much of the rest of southern England was largely covered by woodland, the chalk downland in the area of Stonehenge may have been an unusually open landscape. It is possible that this is why it became the site of an early Neolithic monument complex.

This complex included the causewayed enclosure at Robin Hood’s Ball, two cursus monuments or rectangular earthworks (the Greater, or Stonehenge, and Lesser Cursus), and several long barrows, all dating from the centuries around 3500 BC. The presence of these monuments probably influenced the later location of Stonehenge.

THE EARLIEST MONUMENT

It is possible that features such as the Heel Stone and the low mound known as the ‘North Barrow’ were early components of Stonehenge,but the earliest known major event was the construction of a circular ditch with an inner and outer bank, built about 3000 BC. This enclosed an area about 100 metres in diameter, and had two entrances. It was an early form of henge monument.

Within the bank and ditch were possibly some timber structures and set just inside the bank were 56 pits, known as the Aubrey Holes. There has been much debate about what stood in these holes: the consensus for many years has been that they held upright timber posts, but recently the idea has re-emerged that some of them may have held stones.

Within and around the Aubrey Holes, and also in the ditch, people buried cremations. About 64 cremations have been found, and perhaps as many as 150 individuals were originally buried at Stonehenge, making it the largest late Neolithic cemetery in the British Isles.

THE STONE SETTINGS

In about 2500 BC the stones were set up in the centre of the monument. Two types of stone are used at Stonehenge – the larger sarsens and the smaller ‘bluestones’. The sarsens were erected in two concentric arrangements – an inner horseshoe and an outer circle – and the bluestones were set up between them in a double arc. 

Probably at the same time that the stones were being set up in the centre of the monument, the sarsens close to the entrance were raised, together with the four Station Stones on the periphery.

About 200 or 300 years later the central bluestones were rearranged to form a circle and inner oval (which was again later altered to form a horseshoe). The earthwork Avenue was also built at this time, connecting Stonehenge with the river Avon.

One of the last prehistoric activities at Stonehenge was the digging around the stone settings of two rings of concentric pits, the so-called Y and Z holes, radiocarbon dated by antlers within them to between 1800 and 1500 BC. They may have been intended for a rearrangement of the stones that was never completed.

AFTER STONEHENGE WAS BUILT

The stone settings at Stonehenge were built at a time of great change in prehistory, just as new styles of ‘Beaker’ pottery and the knowledge of metalworking, together with a transition to the burial of individuals with grave goods, were arriving from the Continent. From about 2400 BC, well-furnished Beaker graves such as that of the Amesbury Archer are found nearby.

In the early Bronze Age, one of the greatest concentrations of round barrows in Britain was built in the area around Stonehenge. Many barrow groups appear to have been deliberately located on hilltops visible from Stonehenge itself, such as those on King Barrow Ridge and the particularly rich burials at the Normanton Down cemetery.

Four of the sarsens at Stonehenge were adorned with hundreds of carvings depicting axe-heads and a few daggers. They appear to be bronze axes of the Arreton Down type, dating from about 1750–1500 BC. Perhaps these axes were a symbol of power or status within early Bronze Age society, or were related in some way to nearby round barrow burials.

LATER HISTORY

From the middle Bronze Age, less communal effort went into the construction of ceremonial monuments such as Stonehenge and more on activities such as the creation of fields.

In the Iron Age, probably about 700 BC, a major hillfort later known as Vespasian’s Camp was constructed 1¼ miles east of Stonehenge overlooking the river Avon. Stonehenge appears to have been frequently visited in the Roman period (from AD 43), since many Roman objects have been found there. Recent excavations raised the possibility that it was a place of ritual importance to Romano-British people.

The small town of Amesbury is likely to have been established around the 6th century AD at a crossing point over the Avon. A decapitated man, possibly a criminal, was buried at Stonehenge in the Saxon period. From this time on, sheep husbandry dominated the open downland around Stonehenge.The earliest surviving written references to Stonehenge date from the medieval period, and from the 14th century onwards there are increasing references to Stonehenge and drawings and paintings of it (see Research on Stonehenge).

This photograph, taken in September 1901, shows the remaining upright of the tallest trilithon being supported while Professor Gowland's excavations take place beneath. To the right is the horse-drawn caravan of William Judd, who was appointed custodian by the owners and acted as a guide and photographer at the stones for many years
© Historic England Archives

STONEHENGE IN THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES

Since 1897, when the Ministry of Defence purchased a vast tract of land on Salisbury Plain for army training exercises, the activities of the military have had an impact on the area. Barracks, firing ranges, field hospitals, airfields and light railways were established. Some of these, such as the Stonehenge airfield, have long since been demolished, but others, such as the Larkhill airfield sheds, still stand and are of importance in the history of early military aviation.

Meanwhile, the introduction of turnpike roads and the railway to Salisbury brought many more visitors to Stonehenge. From the 1880s, various stones had been propped up with timber poles, but concern for the safety of visitors grew when an outer sarsen upright and its lintel fell in 1900. The then owner, Sir Edmund Antrobus, with the help of the Society of Antiquaries, organised the re-erection of the leaning tallest trilithon in 1901.

This was the start of a sequence of campaigns to conserve and restore Stonehenge – the last stones were consolidated in 1964.^]

The monument remained in private ownership until 1918 when Cecil Chubb, a local man who had purchased Stonehenge from the Atrobus family at an auction three years previously, gave it to the nation. Thereafter, the duty to conserve the monument fell to the state, today a role performed on its behalf by English Heritage.

From 1927, the National Trust began to acquire the land around Stonehenge to preserve it and restore it to grassland. Large areas of the Stonehenge landscape are now in their ownership. The removal of the old visitor facilities, together with the closure of the section of the A344 which ran close to the monument, will finally return Stonehenge to an open grassland setting. 

The Avenue in the snow, leading up to Stonehenge. The monument has been gradually returned to its original landscape and grassland setting