- From Place des Vosges we follow the Seine to come upon gardens that are serene today
- At the end of the 18th century this was the place to see and be seen...
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 - The Palais-Royal gardens in 1787
People came here to meet. It became a living theater, the place to launch or discover fashion trends. Cafés sprang up and with them, discussions. Palais-Royal became the place from which the new ideas of liberty, equality an fraternity radiated out.
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The demand for equality was particularly subversive. Legal equality would abolish the privileges by which nobles maintained their power. The pace-setters were middle-class...
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- The café where the Revolution broke out
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 - "I jumped up on a table..." - Camilles Desmoulins, who made the celebrated call to arms
The crowd that attacked the Bastille came together in front of the café that sold the least expensive ice cream.
These gardens belonged to a radical-chic prince who encouraged the agitation and who, as a member of the revolutionary government, voted for the execution of his cousin, Louis XVI.
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Decades later, that vote contributed to permanently ending the possibiity of monarchy in France.
For a glimpse of that story, please click...
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The Bastille was a medieval fortress to which kings could send anyone on whim, which made it a symbol of tyranny. The crowd shown above seized it by force on July 14, 1789. That event is considered the start of the "French Revolution" (to be explained). July 14 remains France's national holiday and Russian revolutionaries sang the French national anthem until the Soviet revolution in 191... |
- A last royal Place, to guillotine a king and queen
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 - Place de la Concorde
The spectacular Place de la Concorde is the frontier between royal and modern Paris. Last of the great royal spaces, its boundary is open to the west, anticipating coming expansion.
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The guillotine towered over the Place on the spot where the Obelisk stands now. Here Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were guillotined separately in 1793.
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- The kings re-enter History when the beauty they created saved Paris from Nazi destruction
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We end the visit by that last story.
 - The sublime panorama that saved our city.
This spectacular Place
is the frontier between royal and modern Paris.
Last of the great royal spaces,
its boundary is open to the west, anticipating coming expansion.
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Credit: I8th-century illustrations / flea-market copies, origins not given ; photos / Claude Abron
- Unexpected Paris guided tours
