Place Dauphine

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Place Dauphine
location
Arrondissement 1.
quarter Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois district
Beginning 2-20, rue de Harlay
The End 28-29, rue Henri-Robert
morphology
length 102 m
width 12 to 67 m
history
Emergence 1580 to 1611
designation 1580 to 1611 then since 1814
Original names Place de Thionville (1792-1814)
Coding
Paris 2591
Place Dauphine - view of the widening square (September 2012)
The Place Dauphine - view of the Pont Neuf

The Place Dauphine [ plas dofiːn ] on the western tip of the Île de la Cité in the 1st arrondissement is one of the five royal squares in Paris . It is named after the Dauphin (noble title of the heir to the throne), the son of the French King Henry IV (1553–1610), who after the death of his father gave him on the French throne as King Louis XIII. (1601-1643) followed.

History of origin

Place Dauphine is the second oldest of the royal squares in Paris. The Île de la Cité used to end in the west with a group of three small, marshy islands that were often under water (Ile aux Juifs, Ile des Passeurs and Ilot de la Gourdaine). Here stood the pyre on which Philip the Fair had the last Grand Master of the Templar Order Jacques de Molay executed on March 18, 1314. In order to dry up the area, the neighboring bank fortifications were built between 1580 and 1611, while Henry IV had the islands filled in and the south bank of the main island raised by 6 meters. The king commissioned the wealthy, 71-year-old Achille de Harlay (1535-1616) with the construction of a square on the Île de la Cité. Harlay was the President of the first Paris Parliament and on March 10, 1607, the King gave the area as a gift with the condition that a square be created and individual properties sold. The place name honored the long-awaited Dauphin (heir to the throne, French le Dauphin ), later King Louis XIII, born in 1601 . When the Pont Neuf was inaugurated in 1607 , the situation of the previously planned place changed. The meanwhile reigning Heinrich IV assumed a commercial use of the square. Harlay had a total of 32 two-story houses built out of brick and white limestone blocks on the basis of the building permit dated May 28, 1607, very similar in appearance to the houses on the square in the Marais . In the period that followed, numerous houses were raised or demolished and replaced by new buildings, so that the uniform shape of the square was lost.

The establishment of the square had to take into account its eastern and western boundaries. The triangular shape of the square at the western end of the island was unusual. The triangular shape of the square was based on the shape of the Île de la Cité in this area. At the site of today's Palais de Justice , the royal residence Palais de la Cité delimited the square on its wider east side. The Pont Neuf ran to the west. Today the entrance to the jury court (Cour d'assises) opens onto the square on rue de Harlay. The second royal square after the Place des Vosges was opened between April 5th and 7th, 1612 on the occasion of the wedding of Louis XIII. inaugurated with Anna of Austria . Eight rows of houses were built on the north and south sides, which were completed in 1642. Your architect may have been the military engineer Claude de Chastillon. After 1610, this ensured that the square was completely surrounded, so that the view of the former Palais de la Cité was blocked. Only in the 19th century, with the construction of today's Palais de Justice, the houses on the wider eastern front of the square were demolished.

Place Dauphine - Monument to Henry IV at Pont Neuf (November 2011)
Place Dauphine - Monument to Henry IV on Pont Neuf

Statues

The statue ordered in Florence from Giovanni da Bologna ("Giambologna") for the square arrived in Paris in 1604, and in 1606 it was sent back for completion. The bronze horse was then made until September 1607. When Giambologna died in 1608, Pietro Tacca continued the work. Giambologna and Tacca created a bronze statue of Henry IV, who was assassinated on May 14, 1610 and arrived in Paris on July 24, 1614. Louis XIII laid the foundation stone for this on August 12 or 13, 1614, a provisional inauguration took place on August 23, 1614; but the final completion of the monument was delayed until 1635. This statue of Henry IV was the first public monument in Paris. It was knocked off its pedestal on August 11, 1792 during the French Revolution .

The present monument has stood on the site of the original statue since August 25, 1818 and was designed by François-Frédéric Lemot . Again, it is not - as usual - in the middle of the square, but in the vanishing point of its narrower west entrance.

building

Famous people once lived on Place Dauphine. The inventor Louis Daguerre lived in No. 2–4, and the author Jacques Prévert in No. 11 . Yves Montand and Simone Signoret lived in house number 15 (house “La Roulotte”) from 1951 until their death in 1985, as well as the artist Léona Delcourt and the writer André Breton . The Hotel Henri IV has been in No. 25 since 1840 . Marie-Jeanne "Manon" Philipon was born in No. 28 and lived here until 1780. Through her marriage to the quality controller Jean-Marie Roland de la Platière, who was 20 years her senior, in February 1780 and her active membership in the anti-royal Girondins , she and her husband got into the turmoil of the French Revolution. Her husband became Minister of the Interior on March 23, 1792, but had to resign on January 23, 1793 because of royalism . His wife was arrested on June 1, 1793 and finally came to the Conciergerie , where she was sentenced to death on November 8, 1793 for conspiracy against the Republic and guillotined on the Place de la Concorde that same evening . Inspector Jules Maigret's fictional character was a regular at the “Aux Trois Marche” café (Place Dauphine / corner of rue de Harlay No. 5) and ordered food and drinks from his office.

location

Between 1607 and 1792 and from 1814 it was called Place Dauphine, in the intermediate phase from August 1792 to 1814 it was renamed Place de Thionville . The 102 meter long, 12–67 meter wide square is located on the west side of the Île de la Cité and is accessible from two sides. On the one hand, the square lined with chestnut trees can be reached from the Pont Neuf in the west, and on the other from the rue de Harlay in the east. The western tip of the square leads over the short rue Henri-Robert to the middle of the Pont Neuf. Only the two houses at the narrowest point date from the 17th century, number 14 has retained its original appearance. Restaurants and cafes line the square. The Paul restaurant (No. 15) - where Montand and Signoret were once regular guests - was the location for a scene in Woody Allen's film Midnight in Paris (Premiere: Cannes May 11, 2011, “Minuit à Paris”). The middle of the court is laid out with fine sand, making it ideal for playing boules or pétanque .

Metro lines 7 (with the Pont Neuf stop ) and line 4 (with the Cité stop ) are close to the square .

Others

The square is mentioned in the song Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille ( Je suis le dauphin de la place Dauphine ... ) by Jacques Dutronc from 1968.

See also

The rest of the royal squares of Paris:

Web links

Commons : Place Dauphine  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Taylor, Capital Cities , 1993, p. 203
  2. James Anthony Froude / John Tulloch, Frazer's Magazine, Volume 20, 1839, p. 351

Coordinates: 48 ° 51 ′ 23.4 "  N , 2 ° 20 ′ 33"  E