Place des Vosges

Place des Vosges, originally called Place Royale, was constructed by Henri IV between 1605 and 1612. It was one of the earliest examples of royal city planning in Europe and was built on the site of the Hôtel des Tournelles and its gardens, where Henri II was fatally injured. Catherine de' Medici had the Gothic complex demolished and moved to the Louvre Palace.

The square was inaugurated in 1612 with a grand carrousel to celebrate the engagement of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. The housefronts were all built to the same design with red brick and strips of stone quoins over vaulted arcades that stand on square pillars. The steeply-pitched blue slate roofs have discreet small-paned dormers above the pedimented dormers that stand upon the cornices. Only the north range was built with the vaulted ceilings that the "galleries" were meant to have.

Two pavilions rise higher than the unified roofline of the square, centering the north and south faces and offering access through triple arches. Although they are named the Pavilion of the King and of the Queen, no royal has ever lived in the aristocratic square except for Anne of Austria in the Pavilion de la Reine for a short while. Place Royale paved the way for subsequent developments of Paris that provided a suitable urban background for the French aristocracy and nobility.

The square was a popular meeting place for the nobility until the Revolution. Before the square was completed, Henri IV ordered Place Dauphine to be laid out. The king oversaw an impressive building scheme for the ravaged medieval city within a mere five-year period: additions to the Louvre Palace, the Pont Neuf, and the Hôpital Saint Louis, as well as the two royal squares.

Cardinal Richelieu had an equestrian bronze of Louis XIII erected in the center of the square (there were no garden plots until 1680). While most of the nobility moved to the Faubourg Saint-Germain district in the late 18th century, the square managed to retain some of its aristocratic owners until the Revolution. It was renamed Place des Vosges in 1799 when the département of Vosges became the first to pay taxes supporting a campaign of the Revolutionary army. The Restoration returned the old royal name, but the short-lived Second Republic restored the revolutionary one in 1870.

Today, the square is surrounded by clipped lindens and planted with a bosquet of mature lindens set in grass and gravel.