Place Vendome and Around
From Paris Hotels Reviews
A short walk east of place de la Madeleine lies place Vendome, one of the city’s most impressive set pieces, built by Versailles architect Hardouin-Mansart during the final years of Louis XIV’s reign. It’s a pleasingly symmetrical, eight-sided place, enclosed by a harmonious ensemble of elegant mansions, graced with Corinthian pilasters, mascarons and steeply pitched roofs. Once the grand residences of tax collectors and financiers, they now house such luxury establishments as the Ritz hotel (from where Di and Dodi set off on their last journey), Cartier, Bulgari and other top-flight jewelers, lending the square a decidedly exclusive air. The Ministry of Justice is also sited here, on the west side; its façade still has the marble plaque showing a standard metre put here in 1795 in order to familiarize Parisians with the new unit of measure. No. 12, on the opposite side, now occupied by Chaumet jewelers, is where Chopin died, in 1849. Somewhat out of proportion with the rest of the square, the centerpiece is a towering triumphal column, modeled on Trajan’s column in Rome, and surmounted by a statue of Napoleon dressed as Caesar. It was raised in 1806 to celebrate the Battle of Austerlitz – bronze reliefs of scenes of the battle, cast from 1200 recycled Austro-Russian cannons, spiral their way up the column. The column that stands here today is actually a replica of the original, brought crashing down during the Commune in 1871 – the main instigator behind this act was the artist Gustave Courbet, who was imprisoned and ordered to pay for the column’s restoration; he was financially ruined and lived the rest of his life in exile in Switzerland.
