Place de la Concorde

Place de la Concorde mini guide

The Place de la Concorde is the largest place in Paris. It is situated along the Seine and separates the Tuilerie Gardens from the beginning of the Champs Elysées. It is in the 8th arrondissement of the city and measures 84,000 square metres.

Built between 1755 and 1775, many important historical events took place here. Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and 1119 other people lost their lives here, among them Charlotte Corday (the murderess of Marat), Danton, Philippe egalite and Robespierre.

In the center of the square is the Obelisk of Luxor, a pink granite monolith 23 m (73 tt) high and weighing 220 tons. It is 3300 years old and decorated with hieroglyphics exalting the reign of the pharaon Ramses II. The obelisk was presented as a gift to Charles X by the Egyptian viceroy Mehemet Ali in 1829. The monument was installed here under Louis Philippe who, bearing in mind the death and destruction witnessed by Place de la Concorde, was pleased to have found a non-political monument to replace the unpopular Bourbon Louis the XVth statue. It took three years of travelling from the Nile riverbanks to get the Obelisk to Paris.