Place des Victoires

The Place des Victoires is a circular "place" in Paris, located a short distance northeast from the Palais Royal and straddling the border between the city's first and second arrondissements.

At the center of the "place" is an equestrian monument in honor of King Louis XIV, celebrating the Treaties of Nijmegen concluded in 1678-79. A marshal of France, François de La Feuillade, vicomte d'Aubusson, on his own speculative initiative, demolished the old private mansions around the area; Feuillade's project was soon taken over by the Bâtiments du Roi and the royal architect, Jules Hardouin Mansart, was entrusted with redesigning a more superb area, still ringed with private houses, to accommodate a majestic statue of the triumphant king. Mansart's design, of 1685, articulated the square's unified façades according to a formula utilised in some Parisian "hôtels particuliers", of colossal pilasters linking two floors, standing on a high arcaded based with channeled rustication; the faċades were capped with sloping slate "mansard roofs", punctuated by dormer windows. [Rochelle Ziskin, "The Place de Nos Conquêtes and the Unraveling of the Myth of Louis XIV" "The Art Bulletin" 76.1 (March 1994:147-162) p. 152, note 23; illus. 155 fig. 11.] But at the unveiling of the monument, these projected façades were presented painted on canvas. [Ziskin 1994:154, note.] By 1692, the Place des Victoires was pierced by six streets, and the circular plan functioned as a joint that harmonized their several axes. The original statue, of Louis XIV crowned by Fame and trampling the Triple Alliance underfoot, in gilt bronze, stood on a high square pedestal applied with bas-relief panels and effusively flattering inscriptions; dejected bronze figures were seated at the corners. The sculptor was Martin Desjardins, [An engraving of Desjardins' monument is illustrated in Ziskin 1994:56 fig. 12.] part of the team that was cooperatively at work at the Château of Versailles and its gardens. The king permanently abandoned Paris, and Louis' imperial ambitions in Europe were deflated by wars and crushed at the treaty of 1697, which the military architect Vauban termed "a humiliating disaster for the king". [Quoted in J. Wolf, "Louis XIV" (New York) 1968:487.] "During the course of the eighteenth century," Rochelle Ziskin has noted, "critics would suggest that the arrogance of representation at the Place des Victoires had serious political consequences and may have been a factor in provoking war." The grandiose memorial that had begun to embarrass Louis XIV himself [In a memorandum of 1699, permitting the installation of an equestrian statue in Paris, Louis' secretary specified the king's desire for a plain pedestal, "nothing, in a word, that resembles the reliefs, slaves and inscriptions of the Place des Victoires" (quoted in Ziskin1994:161 and note 51..] was destroyed in 1792, in the French Revolution.

In 1828 a restored Bourbon king, Charles X, commissioned the current equestrian statue, which was sculpted by François Joseph Bosio. Louis XIV, dressed as a Roman emperor, sits on a proud horse skillfully pulled up on its hind legs. An iron gate circles the square, surrounding the 12 meter-high statue. The area around the Place des Victoires is now an upscale neighbourhood. Fashion designers Kenzo, Cacharel, Thierry Mugler and others have branches at the Place des Victoires.

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