The directory «Plots»

Place de la Republique

The Place de la République is a square in Paris, located on the border between the 3rd, 10th and 11th arrondissements. It is named after the French Republic. The Métro station of République lies beneath the square.

The location of the Place corresponds to the bastion of the gate of the Temple in the wall of Charles V (raised between 1356 and 1383). Decorated in 1811 with a fountain called the Château-d'Eau, designed by Pierre-Simon Girard, it took its current shape under the Second French Empire as part of Baron Hausmann's city renovation scheme. Most of the theatres of boulevard du Temple were demolished for this project.

The "caserne" du Prince Eugène, a military barracks later named the caserne du Château d'Eau, then the caserne Vérines, was erected by Degrove on this site, in 1854, to replace the former summer exhibition of Wauxhall and the famous diorama where Daguerre, one of the inventors of the photograph, had given his fifteen-minute demonstrations. Built with the foresight to house 3200 men, it has, since 1947, housed the French Republican Guard.
Gabriel Davioud, Paris's official city architect, added to the square, building the Magasins réunis along its whole north side in 1866. He also built a second fountain, one decorated with bronze lions. (Girard's fountain was judged insufficient for the site, but it was salvaged and re-erected in 1867 in the market of La Villette).

At its centre of the large square rises the monument with the statue of the Republic (1883), approximately 10 metres high, work of Dalou, depicting the events of the history of the Republic.

France, 2003, Monument to Republique