Hôtel de Ville, Paris
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Hôtel de Ville | |
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General information | |
Type | City hall |
Architectural style | Renaissance Revival |
Location | Paris, France |
Completed | 1357 1533 (expansion) 1892 (reconstruction) |
Design and construction | |
Architect(s) | Théodore Ballu, Édouard Deperthes |
The Hôtel de Ville (French pronunciation:
History
The original building
In July 1357, Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants (i.e. mayor) of Paris, bought the so-called maison aux piliers ("House of Pillars") in the name of the municipality on the gently sloping shingle beach which served as a river port for unloading wheat and wood and later merged into a square, the Place de Grève ("Strand Square"), a place where Parisians often gathered, particularly for public executions. Ever since 1357, the City of Paris's administration has been located on the same location where the Hôtel de Ville stands today. Before 1357, the city administration was located in the so-called parloir aux bourgeois ("Parlour of Burgesses") near the Châtelet.
In 1533, King
During the next two centuries, no changes were made to the edifice which was the stage for several famous events during the French Revolution. On 14 July 1789, the last provost of the merchants Jacques de Flesselles was murdered by an angry crowd. On 27 July 1794, Maximilien Robespierre attempted to commit suicide following a coup and was arrested along with his followers.
In 1835, on the initiative of
The Paris Commune
During the
The Hôtel de Ville had been the headquarters of the French Revolution, and likewise, it was the headquarters of the Paris Commune. When defeat became increasingly imminent and the French army approached the building, the Communards set fire to the Hôtel de Ville, along with other government buildings, destroying the building and almost all of the city archives.
Already, early that morning, the Commune added to the flames one of the finest and most historic buildings of all Paris -- the Hôtel de Ville itself. At 8 a.m. some fifteen members met there to discuss its immediate evacuation, and only
Delescluze and one other had protested. In its despair, a scorched-earth policy had now become the retreating Communard's automatic response, and by 11 a.m. the Hôtel de Ville was a sea of flames.[5]
Reconstruction
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At turn of the century, rebuilt in the 1870s in its original French Renaissance style inspired by the Châteaux of the Loire Valley.
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Science, by Jules Blanchard.
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Statue ofEtienne Marcel, facing the Seine
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Art, by Laurent Marqueste.
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Courtyard with spiraled staircase.
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Architecture by Henri-Charles Maniglier (south facade)
Reconstruction of City Hall lasted from 1873 through 1892 (19 years) and was directed by architects
The architects rebuilt the interior of the Hôtel de Ville within the stone shell that had survived the fire. While the rebuilt Hôtel de Ville from the outside appeared to be a copy of the 16th-century French Renaissance building that stood before 1871, the new interior was based on an entirely new design, with ceremonial rooms lavishly decorated in the 1880s style.
The central ceremonial doors under the clock are flanked by allegorical figures of Art, by Laurent Marqueste, and Science, by Jules Blanchard. Some 230 other sculptors were commissioned to produce 338 individual figures of famous Parisians on each facade, along with lions and other sculptural features. The sculptors included prominent academicians like Ernest-Eugène Hiolle and Henri Chapu, but easily the most famous was Auguste Rodin. Rodin produced the figure of the 18th-century mathematician Jean le Rond d'Alembert, finished in 1882.
The statue on the garden wall on the south side is of
The decor featured murals by the leading painters of the day, including
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Max Berthelin, The salle des fêtes of the Hotel de Ville of Paris for the visit of queen Victoria on 23 August 1855.
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Ceiling of the new salle des fêtes.
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Louis-Ernest Barrias, Hunting (1889), grande salle à manger.
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Léon Bonnat, Le Triomphe de l'Art (1894), salon des Arts.
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Albert Besnard, La Vérité, entraînant les Sciences à sa suite, c. 1890, salon des Sciences.
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Alexandre Falguière, Fishing (c. 1880), grande salle à manger.
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Henri-Camille Danger, North entrance lounge: L'Aurore boréale, 1892 (ceiling)
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Henri-Camille Danger, Sketch for the North entrance lounge. The night. The Dragon.
Political venue
Since the French Revolution, the building has been the scene of a number of historical events, notably the proclamation of the French Third Republic in 1870 and a speech by Charles de Gaulle on 25 August 1944 during the Liberation of Paris when he greeted a crowd from a front window.[6]
In 2002 the mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, a socialist and the city's first openly gay leader, was stabbed during the first all-night, citywide Sleepless Night (Nuit Blanche; literally, White Night) festival when the doors of the long-inaccessible building were thrown open to the public. But Delanoë recovered and did not lose his zeal for access, later converting the mayor's sumptuous private apartments into a crèche (day nursery) for the children of municipal workers.
Nearby places
The northern (left) side of the building is located on the
See also
- List of town halls in Paris
- Lost artworks
- Place de Grève
References
- ^ Texier 2012, pp. 26–27.
- ^ Milza, 2009a, pp. 397–398
- ^ "Hotel de Ville, the Paris City Hall". Paris Digest. 2018. Retrieved 8 September 2018.
- ^ OCLC 922079975.
- ^ Horne, Alistair (1965). "Chapter 25: 'La Semaine Sanglante'--II". The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870–1. St. Martin's Press, New York. pp. 389–390.
- ^ "Paris: la place de l'Hôtel de Ville devient l'Esplanade de la Libération". LExpress.fr (in French). 22 April 2013. Retrieved 15 August 2022.
Bibliography
Books cited in the text
- Fierro, Alfred (1996). Histoire et dictionnaire de Paris. Robert Laffont. ISBN 2-221-07862-4.}
- Milza, Pierre (2009a). L'année terrible: La Commune (mars–juin 1871). Paris: Perrin. ISBN 978-2-262-03073-5.
- Poisson, Michel (2009). 1000 Immeubles et monuments de Paris. Parigramme. ISBN 978-2-84096-539-8.
- Texier, Simon (2012). Paris- Panorama de l'architecture. Parigramme. ISBN 978-2-84096-667-8.