the vaults. In the square’s center, safe behind iron grillwork, children oblivious to the backdrop play in sandboxes while au pairs chat on double-sided benches.
Place des Vosges draws me in at least once a day and in all seasons, for the simple reason that Alison and I live about two hundred yards west of it. Sometimes, especially on a rainy night, the square feels like our cloister, a place of reflection and meditation. Sit in summer under the scented linden trees as the sun goes down and the street lamps flicker into life and you’ll feel not only the linden blossoms’ sticky weeping, but also your sensibilities tingling. Or, on a winter’s day, wander from shop to well-lit shop under the arches while the rain pours down on the rest of the world, and ponder the ephemera of consumerism.
Architects and art historians will assure you that Place des Vosges offers France’s best example of early seventeenth-century urbanism. Essentially it’s a cross between Italianate Mannerism and late-Renaissance Dutch styles, neatly combining a gracious piazza and four sets of row houses. The proportions are on a human scale, with four stories raked skyward, a succession, from ground level up, of arches in rhythmic rows, tall French windows, and rectangular dormers or porthole-shaped oeils-de-boeuf on the roof. Time and the elements have conspired with the foibles and fantasies of man to round the square’s hard edges and skew what had been intended as perfect symmetry.
Unlike the bustling, coldly beautiful Place Vendôme or Place de la Concorde, famed for their hotels, clubs, and ritzy jewelry shops, Place des Vosges has always been animated and lived in, and ultimately that is what makes it a likeable spot. Madame de Sévigné, the seventeenth-century queen of epistolary literature and high-society gossip (now read exclusively by French high schoolers), was born on the square’s south side. Across the way, Marion de Lorme, the courtesan of kings, distributed her favors, if we must be polite. On Place des Vosges’s northern flank the pious Armand Jean de Vignerot du Plessis, Deuxième Maréchal-Duc de Richelieu, seduced a catalog of lovers that reportedly included every noble lady then resident in the square’s pavilions. Piety and licentiousness walked arm-in-arm, just as it does today.
The duelists, the gamblers, and the glittering Grand-Siècle pomp of the place—originally named La Place Royale—inspired Pierre Corneille’s now unreadable comic play, also named, somewhat predictably, La Place Royale . Even when the square hit its nadir just after World War II, its badly lit arcades and grubby backcourts provided the setting for Georges Simenon’s murder mystery, L’Ombre Chinoise (later turned into a cult movie).
“It was Montgomery’s lance that created Place des Vosges,” wrote Victor Hugo with typical aplomb. From 1832 to 1848 Hugo lived at number six and his apartment is now an embalmed house-museum. Decrypted, Hugo’s line means that Gabriel de Lorges de Montgomery, captain of the French sovereign’s Scottish Guards, accidentally killed King Henri II here in 1559. The two were jousting in front of the Hôtel Royal des Tournelles, which stood more or less where Place des Vosges stands today. Montgomery’s lance pierced the king’s visor, eye, and brain. Understandably, Henri II’s widowed queen, Catherine de Médicis, came to hate the royal residence, and eventually had it demolished. For decades the former main courtyard did service as a horse market. It was populist King Henri IV (famous for coining the expression “a chicken in every pot,” and for sleeping in a different damsel’s bed every night), flanked by his minister the Duc de Sully, who in 1605 hit upon the idea of turning the horse market into a piazza—an Italian novelty unknown in Paris at the time—lined by money-spinning weavers’ works and boutiques. Here the court could stroll and make merry far from the Machiavellian intrigues of
Place des Vosges draws me in at least once a day and in all seasons, for the simple reason that Alison and I live about two hundred yards west of it. Sometimes, especially on a rainy night, the square feels like our cloister, a place of reflection and meditation. Sit in summer under the scented linden trees as the sun goes down and the street lamps flicker into life and you’ll feel not only the linden blossoms’ sticky weeping, but also your sensibilities tingling. Or, on a winter’s day, wander from shop to well-lit shop under the arches while the rain pours down on the rest of the world, and ponder the ephemera of consumerism.
Architects and art historians will assure you that Place des Vosges offers France’s best example of early seventeenth-century urbanism. Essentially it’s a cross between Italianate Mannerism and late-Renaissance Dutch styles, neatly combining a gracious piazza and four sets of row houses. The proportions are on a human scale, with four stories raked skyward, a succession, from ground level up, of arches in rhythmic rows, tall French windows, and rectangular dormers or porthole-shaped oeils-de-boeuf on the roof. Time and the elements have conspired with the foibles and fantasies of man to round the square’s hard edges and skew what had been intended as perfect symmetry.
Unlike the bustling, coldly beautiful Place Vendôme or Place de la Concorde, famed for their hotels, clubs, and ritzy jewelry shops, Place des Vosges has always been animated and lived in, and ultimately that is what makes it a likeable spot. Madame de Sévigné, the seventeenth-century queen of epistolary literature and high-society gossip (now read exclusively by French high schoolers), was born on the square’s south side. Across the way, Marion de Lorme, the courtesan of kings, distributed her favors, if we must be polite. On Place des Vosges’s northern flank the pious Armand Jean de Vignerot du Plessis, Deuxième Maréchal-Duc de Richelieu, seduced a catalog of lovers that reportedly included every noble lady then resident in the square’s pavilions. Piety and licentiousness walked arm-in-arm, just as it does today.
The duelists, the gamblers, and the glittering Grand-Siècle pomp of the place—originally named La Place Royale—inspired Pierre Corneille’s now unreadable comic play, also named, somewhat predictably, La Place Royale . Even when the square hit its nadir just after World War II, its badly lit arcades and grubby backcourts provided the setting for Georges Simenon’s murder mystery, L’Ombre Chinoise (later turned into a cult movie).
“It was Montgomery’s lance that created Place des Vosges,” wrote Victor Hugo with typical aplomb. From 1832 to 1848 Hugo lived at number six and his apartment is now an embalmed house-museum. Decrypted, Hugo’s line means that Gabriel de Lorges de Montgomery, captain of the French sovereign’s Scottish Guards, accidentally killed King Henri II here in 1559. The two were jousting in front of the Hôtel Royal des Tournelles, which stood more or less where Place des Vosges stands today. Montgomery’s lance pierced the king’s visor, eye, and brain. Understandably, Henri II’s widowed queen, Catherine de Médicis, came to hate the royal residence, and eventually had it demolished. For decades the former main courtyard did service as a horse market. It was populist King Henri IV (famous for coining the expression “a chicken in every pot,” and for sleeping in a different damsel’s bed every night), flanked by his minister the Duc de Sully, who in 1605 hit upon the idea of turning the horse market into a piazza—an Italian novelty unknown in Paris at the time—lined by money-spinning weavers’ works and boutiques. Here the court could stroll and make merry far from the Machiavellian intrigues of
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