The majestic city of Paris is more than 2,000 years old, and its shape has changed radically over the centuries. Before being conquered by the Romans, the city was limited to a small settlement on this small island in the middle of the Seine River, later called Île de la Cité, the city island. Once having conquered this settlement, the Romans established the city of Lutetia Parisiorum, which in Latin means “the swamp of the Parisians”, the tribe of the Gauls who inhabited the island.
Lutetia Parisiorum was essentially a settlement divided into two parts; The original Gallic inhabitants inhabited the island — strategically a key crossing of the Seine River — while the Romans preferred the higher , drier terrain of the slopes and summit of St. Genevieve Mountain to the south. The Cardo Maximus, the main street that crossed the Roman cities from north to south, was the current Rue Saint Jacques, which since then continued across the bridges of the arms of the Seine.
The precise urban layout of Lutetia is not known, since it was not a very important city at that time and therefore it is not so easy to find Roman remains in Paris, but you can still find some vestiges of the amphitheater that now serve as foundations of buildings. modern. Today French children play soccer where gladiators used to fight.
Nothing remains of the Roman forum, but you can still see remains of the baths. The best preserved Roman construction in Paris is the frigidarium, the cold room of the thermal baths, today part of the medieval abbey of Cluny. On the island, the site now occupied by the Notre Dame Cathedral is the site of the Temple of Jupiter, which already established a religious focal point for the Romans.
Roman Lutetia was invaded and destroyed by Gaul barbarians in the 3rd century, and when the Romans reestablished the city in 360 AD. C. , they moved it to the island and built a wall around it to increase its defenses.
From this new nucleus, which has since been known as Paris, the city continued to expand until the 20th century in concentric rings clearly defined by successive walls. During the Middle Ages, the island remained the most important part of the city, although the city continued to grow outside the island, the Cardo Maximus laid out by the Romans remained the main street, but the rest of the original urban layout was lost due to the organic growth of the city. In medieval Paris there were no public urban spaces of great importance.
Generally, in medieval cities, public squares are a residual space, an accidental result of the organic intersection of streets. Notre Dame Cathedral was accessed by crossing a parvis, a small enclosure in front of the church. And the only other public space of importance in the late Middle Ages was the Place de Grève, today part of the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville north of the river.
There were three main bridges: the Petit Pont from the south bank to the Île de la Cité, which continued towards the north bank as the Pont Notre Dame, and the Pont au Change, which crossed only the northern arm. The other two bridges were small, pedestrian, and made of wood, which collapsed and rebuilt all the time, but the river was invisible from the bridges, since they were continually flanked by buildings. This arrangement was very common in the Middle Ages, and can still be seen in some cities such as Florence in Italy, where the Ponte Vecchio, the bridge over the Arno River, is flanked by buildings on both sides.
The banks of the Seine were also completely built up and there was no relationship between the city and the river. The Italian Renaissance focused on reviving ancient Rome, and applying the knowledge and techniques of the ancient Romans in art and architecture, until finally, the Renaissance came to monarchical France and just as each emperor of Rome ordered to build his own forum in the Eternal City, each king of France ordered the construction of his own square with an equestrian statue of himself in the center. The purpose of most of these squares was to encourage the city's growth into new areas while glorifying the monarchy with an equestrian statue of the king as the centerpiece.
An equestrian statue is a statue of a man on horseback. The word comes from the Latin "equus" which means horse. In ancient Rome, equestrian statues often depicted military leaders, particularly the emperor.
Most of them were cast during the Middle Ages to reuse the bronze in coins and church bells. The only equestrian statue remaining from Ancient Rome is that of Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome. People in the Middle Ages thought it was a statue of Constantine, and that's why they didn't destroy it.
The construction of these squares was successful in activating traffic in various parts of the city: The first to achieve this was Place Dauphine, on the western side of the island. From its beginnings, Paris had only one crossing over the Seine: the two separate bridges that linked the central section of the Cité with the north and south banks. As Paris prospered, traffic on the bridges increased, so that by the mid-16th century they could no longer support the volume of traffic, and under the reign of Henry III, work began in 1578 on a second crossing: the two arms of the Pont Neuf (new bridge) - to connect the end of the Île de la Cité with the north and south banks.
The Pont Neuf was built according to the designs of Androuet du Cerceau and today contradicts its name by being the oldest bridge in Paris, with the original structure still intact. To provide access to the bridge from the south bank, a new street - Rue Dauphine - 10 meters wide was opened. This exemplifies the totalitarian regime of the monarchy at the time; If the king decreed the opening of a street, the buildings were demolished to make this happen.
After the bridge was completed in 1604, a new residential square was built next to it, the Place Dauphine, or Dauphine Square, in honor of the future 6-year-old Louis XIII, the Dauphin. Place Dauphine was the first of many residential squares built in Paris during the Renaissance, but this one was planned in a unique way. The essential difference between this square and the later ones is not only its shape, which narrows with the shores of the island, but the fact that the statue of the king is located outside the closed area.
It is in its central axis, but it is located on the other side of the street that joins the two arms of the Pont Neuf. However, the statue undoubtedly belonged to the square and not to the city; for although it occupied a prominent place at the end of the island, the king looked towards the square and not towards the river. You can see in old engravings that from the beginning, this area of the island was planned to have a panoramic view of the river.
Instead of following the medieval practice of placing buildings along the edge of the island, space was deliberately left at the edges to accommodate streets. Originally, the statue was visible from the plaza and actually dominated the view of it, but the later addition of trees meant that the statue could no longer be seen from here. The Place Royale, or "Royal Square", is of great importance in European urban history as a prototype of the residential square.
Unlike the traditional approach of houses facing noisy, mixed-use streets, the residential plaza is designed to enclose a space where unwanted external traffic is excluded. Taking this revolutionary concept even further, the royal planner decreed that all buildings facing the square must adhere to the same façade design, emphasizing the importance of aesthetic unity within the space. The square is made up of thirty-eight houses with facades of uniform design.
In the center of the north and south sides, taller and more dominant bodies contained the only two arched entrances to the plaza. Later, a street was added on the north side to facilitate vehicle access. An arcaded ground floor gave a protected entrance to the houses and provided a continuous covered connection.
Above were two upper floors surmounted by mansards or individual pitched roofs with a row of dormer windows. The construction of the Place Royale may also have had great social importance. Previously, the nobility had lived in rural castles or in palaces located in different parts of the city.
The Place Royale represented a deliberate effort to centralize the aristocracy around a unifying concept: to serve as a backdrop for the monarchy. Instead of a fragmented group of petty princes often in opposition to the king, they were now becoming part of the court spectacle. In 1639 , an equestrian statue of Louis The square was renamed Place des Vosges or Vosges Square after the French Revolution.
The Place des Victoires, "square of victories", was designed by Jules-Hardouin Mansart, one of the most influential baroque architects in France in the 17th century. The best thing about this square is that, although it is a traffic space, its circular shape clarifies and opens the space contrasting with the compact streets of the neighborhood, with the main purpose of focusing attention on the statue of Louis XIV in the center. The famous Place Vendôme, designed by the same architect, was originally known as Place Louis the corners cut, thus creating an octagonal effect.
The buildings are three storeys with an additional row of dormer windows in the mansards. The overall height was specifically limited to be lower than the 16 meter tall statue. In the center of its shorter sides, two streets give access to the square.
Originally, these streets were for minor traffic access only and each ended at buildings near the plaza. However, years later, both streets were extended through the city's main network and connected the square to the Paris Opera to the north and the Tuileries Garden to the south. The centers of the plaza's long sides are emphasized by pediments and columns, as are the four corners.
The equestrian statue, perfectly scaled to fit the proportions of the square, was destroyed during the Revolution. Its replacement, the 44-meter-high Austerlitz Column, erected in 1810 by Napoleon, is excessive and disproportionate. However, this column was inspired by Trajan's column in Rome, located in Trajan's Forum.
Trajan's column contains marble reliefs depicting the wars against the Dacians. Napoleon's column represents the war against the Austrians at Austerlitz. The bronze used for the column was obtained from enemy cannons taken as spoils of war.
As you can see, the French monarchs try to exalt themselves by seeking connections between themselves and the Roman emperors. And this not only happens in France, but it happens with all European monarchies of the modern era. Renaissance architecture is characterized by its pure shapes and symmetry, which is why the morphology of these squares were pure shapes such as a circle, a triangle or a square.
It is about designing the space and the edges of the space rather than designing a freestanding mass like a building. And the enclosed spaces of these Renaissance squares within the medieval layout of Paris evoke the city of Rome in ancient times, where you had this chaotic layout of compact streets and then you entered the Roman forum and the space opened up to a closed area with a equestrian statue of the emperor in the center. To the northwest of the Île de la Cité is the Louvre, today one of the most important museums in the world, but in the 17th century it was a palace of kings, built in several stages over the centuries.
The development of the Louvre palace played a crucial role in the subsequent development of the city. Caterina de Medici, widow of King Henry II, tired of living in the narrow and closed courtyards of the Louvre, commissioned the architect Philibert Delorme in 1563 to build a new palace outside the walls with a large Italian-style garden that extended towards West. This was the Tuileries Palace, unfinished when Caterina died in 1568, and completed by Henry IV, who also attached the new palace to the Louvre.
In the 19th century, under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte, the North Gallery was started on the Rue de Rivoli side, thus creating an immense courtyard. This northern side was completed under Napoleon III in 1857, but in 1871 revolutionary communards burned down the Tuileries Palace, leaving it in ruins. The Louvre was lucky to escape unscathed; The damaged western ends of its north and south wings were restored, giving the current open courtyard form.
The Tuileries Garden was the cause of major later developments to the west: in 1616 the Cours-la-Reine, the queen's walk, was created along the bank of the Seine, and in 1667, André Le Nôtre, the King's gardener who designed the Gardens of Versailles, laid out the Avenue de Champs Élysées with its majestic perspective towards the Place de l'Etoile, the square of the star, and the continuation towards the Neuilly bridge and beyond, passing by the Bois de Boulogne, a large forest outside the city that centuries later Napoleon III converted into a public park. The aim was to transform the nature of the Tuileries garden design from static to dynamic, with the axis generated within the garden extending outwards along the Avenue, considered today the most beautiful avenue in the world. The name Champs Élysées is French for "Elysian Fields", which in Greek mythology is a place in the underworld reserved for dead heroes.
In 1660, the northern walls of Paris, which ran from the Bastille to the current site of the Madeleine, were demolished and in their place were wide tree-lined streets with two triumphal arches marking the ancient entrances to the city. These tree-lined streets became known as "boulevard", a term that originally meant stockade, a form of medieval defense used before the use of actual walls, but after these streets were made, the term boulevard remained and today the word simply means a wide tree-lined avenue. In 1775, the enormous space between the Tuileries Garden and the Avenue de Champs Elysées was transformed into a new square called Place Louis XV, with a statue of him in the center.
Unlike the other Renaissance squares we saw, this square was planned as an open space, not contained by architecture as in previous squares, but contained by nature. The square reinforced the axis between the Tuileries and Champs Élysées, and created a new north-south axis between the later Madeleine church, built in the form of a Roman temple, and the Bourbon Palace on the other side of the river. To reinforce this axis, Jacques-Ange Gabriel, the architect of the square, built two identical buildings on each side of the axis.
The statue of Louis After the Regime of Terror, a period of the French Revolution where numerous public executions took place in this square, it was renamed Place de la Concorde. The enormous obelisk in the center was brought from the Luxor temple in Egypt and erected in 1836. The base of the obelisk is adorned with gold carvings that tell of the great feat it was to transport the obelisk from Egypt and erect it in the center of the square.
The two fountains proposed in the original plan were added in 1854 to both sides of the obelisk, aligned with the axes of the square. The Arc de Triomphe, located in the center of the Place de l'Étoile, It was originally proposed by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806 after his victory at Austerlitz. In ancient Rome, triumphal arches were built for the emperor to pass through when he won a battle, once again, European monarchs like Napoleon saw themselves as Roman emperors.
Caesar Augustus, the first Roman emperor, boasted that he left the city in marble that he received in brick, referring to the fact that he demolished so many brick buildings in Rome and rebuilt them in marble. And in 1842, Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, Napoleon III, wrote: "I want to be a new Augustus, because Augustus made Rome a city of marble," and from 1850 to 1870, he rebuilt much of Paris and gave the city its current appearance. When you visit Paris, you will notice that most of the buildings are beautiful, built in a classical Roman style and have a very special character, they are all built with a local stone known as Lutetian limestone.
Lutetian limestone has a kind of beige tone that gives the city a special character, and it also has a similar tone to the travertine that the Romans used in Italy, so it also has some connection with ancient Rome , with Napoleon III . With the help of his prefect, Baron Haussmann, he drew up a new city plan where he opened dozens of wide and long avenues that connected important parts of the city. This plan of straight primary avenues was inspired by the street system in Rome created 300.
years earlier by Pope Sixtus V, but on a much larger scale. His ambition was to make Paris not only the most charming city that had ever existed, but also the most charming that could exist. This plan integrated more important sites such as the Hotel des Invalides, a residence for veteran and disabled soldiers, whose chapel is now a shrine to some of France's top military leaders, especially the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte.
The Champ de Mars, which was used as a training ground by the French army until it eventually became the site of the Eiffel Tower in 1889, when it was built as the centerpiece of a World's Fair commemorating the centenary of the French Revolution. Other exhibition buildings were dismantled, but the Eiffel Tower was preserved. Napoleon III's plan also incorporated the Pantheon, on Saint Genevieve Mountain, where the most illustrious figures in French history are buried, and the Luxembourg Palace, a royal residence converted into a legislative building after the revolution.
Two more walls were built around Paris in the 18th and 19th centuries, but both were eventually replaced by boulevards. Today, all the modern buildings and skyscrapers in Paris are concentrated at the end of the Champs Élysées axis, in an area called La Défense, far from the historic core. As you can see, urban design can take decades or even centuries to complete.
This part of Paris began with the palace and gardens of Caterina de Medici in the 16th century, and developed over more than 250 years to its current form, respecting the heritage of the past and contributing towards the realization of one of the greatest urban achievements. magnificently organized in history, this intersection, the Place de la Concorde. I hope you learned and enjoyed.
Please like this video, subscribe to my channel, and we'll see you very soon in the next episode. Bye bye!
