Place des Victoires
The Place des Victoires is a circular place
History
At the center of the Place des Victoires is an
Hardouin-Mansart's conception
Hardouin-Mansart's design, of 1685, articulated the square's unified façades according to a formula utilised in some Parisian hôtels particuliers, (palatial private homes). Mansart chose colossal pilasters linking two floors, standing on a high arcaded base with rustication of the pilasters; the façades were capped with sloping slate "mansard roofs", punctuated by dormer windows.[3] However, because the building work was incomplete at the time of the unveiling of the monument, the envisioned façades were painted on canvas.[4] By 1692, the Place des Victoires was pierced by six streets, and the circular plan functioned as a flexible joint to harmonize their various axes.
Desjardins sculpture
The original statue, of Louis XIV crowned by Victory and trampling Cerberus underfoot, in
Louis XIV's reversals
Louis permanently abandoned Paris in 1682, and his imperial ambitions in Europe were deflated by subsequent wars; the
Modern times
In 1793, the Place was renamed Place des Victoires-Nationaux (National Victories Square), and a wooden pyramid was erected on the site of the destroyed statue. In 1810, under the rule of
In 1828, the restored Bourbon king, Charles X, commissioned the current equestrian statue, which was sculpted by François Joseph Bosio in imitation of the famous Bronze Horseman. Louis XIV, dressed as a Roman emperor, sits on a proud horse rearing on its hind legs. An iron fence encircles the twelve-meter-high monument.
Square today
The area surrounding the Place des Victoires is now an upmarket neighborhood. Fashion designers
Metro station
The Place des Victoires is:
Located near the Étienne Marcel .
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It is served by lines 3, 4, 7, and 14.
Notes
- public squarecarries in English.
- ^ ISBN 978-1405386951.
- ^ Rochelle Ziskin, "The Place de Nos Conquêtes and the Unraveling of the Myth of Louis XIV" The Art Bulletin 76.1 (March 1994:147-162) p. 152, note 23; illus. 155 fig. 11.
- ^ Ziskin 1994:154, note.
- ^ An engraving of Desjardins' monument is illustrated in Ziskin 1994:56 fig. 12.
- ^ Quoted in J. Wolf, Louis XIV (New York) 1968:487.
- ^ In a memorandum of 1699, permitting the installation of an equestrian statue in Paris, Louis' secretary specified the king's desire for a plain pedestal, "nothing, in a word, that resembles the reliefs, slaves and inscriptions of the Place des Victoires" (quoted in Ziskin1994:161 and note 51.
External links
- Media related to Place des Victoires (Paris) at Wikimedia Commons