Hotel de Ville
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- Published on Monday, 25 July 2011 04:45
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L'Hotel De Ville and Surrounding Area
But the City Hall (L'Hotel de Ville) in Paris is a beautiful building well worth seeing, and is also very conveniently placed to see a number of other sights on your list of places to see in Paris.
To get there, take the Metro to the aptly named Metro station Hotel de Ville. This will put you on Rue de Rivoli and you will see the City Hall as soon as you come out. If you have children with you, they will particularly like the plaza in front of it which has a large area that they can run around in. There are plenty of pigeons for them to chase, and fountains at each end.
There are often musical acts or exhibitions here, which can make this a really nice place to go for a picnic. There are plenty of cafes and restaurants in the area that you can relax in if you haven't brought anything for a picnic. It is just across the river from the Ile de la Cite, and you can even see the Notre Dame Cathedral from here.
This is such a central place, that you have a lot of options once you have finished here.
You can take a stroll along the River Seine. Going across the bridge (Pont d'Arcole) and turning into the Quai aux Fleurs or the Quai de la Corse is your best option here as both of these roads are much quieter than the riverside roads next to L'Hotel de Ville. You could also cross the same bridge to the Ile de la Cite and stroll along Rue d'Arcole to the front of the Notre Dame. The Quai aux Fleurs will take you to the back of the Notre Dame.
Or you could take a short walk along the Rue du Renard (just across the Rue de Rivoli) till you come to the Centre George Pompidou (which I have covered in another article). Even the Forum des Halles is easily accessible from here - just turn left when you get to the Centre Georges Pompidou and walk along Rue Aubry le Boucher to Rue Berger, and there it is.
This is a wonderful, central location from which you can easily get to see many of the places on your list of things to see in Paris.
Enjoy your vacation!
In July 1357, Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants (i.e. mayor) of Paris, bought the so-called maison aux piliers ("House of Pillars") in the name of the municipality on the gently sloping shingle beach which served as a river port for unloading wheat and wood and later merged into a square, the Place de Grève(French for "Square of the Strand"), a place where Parisians often gathered, particularly for public executions. Ever since 1357, the City of Paris's administration has been located on the same location where the Hôtel de Ville stands today. Before 1357, the city administration was located in the so-calledparloir aux bourgeois ("Parlour of Burgesses") near the Châtelet.
In 1533, King Francis I decided to endow the city with a city hall which would be worthy of Paris, then the largest city of Europe and Christendom. He appointed two architects: Italian Dominique de Cortone, nicknamed Boccador because of his red beard, and Frenchman Pierre Chambiges. The House of Pillars was torn down and Boccador, steeped in the spirit of the Renaissance, drew up the plans of a building which was at the same time tall, spacious, full of light and refined. Building work was not finished until 1628 during the reign of Louis XIII.
During the next two centuries, no changes were made to the edifice which was the stage for several famous events during the French Revolution (notably the murder of the last provost of the merchants Jacques de Flesselles by an angry crowd on 14 July 1789 and the coup of 9 Thermidor Year II when Robespierrewas shot in the jaw and arrested in the Hôtel de Ville with his followers). Eventually, in 1835, on the initiative of Rambuteau, préfet of the Seine département, two wings were added to the main building and were linked to the facade by a gallery, to provide more space for the expanded city government. The architects were Étienne-Hippolyte Godde and Jean-Baptiste Lesueur.
During the Franco-Prussian War, the building played a key role in several political events. On 30 October 1870, revolutionaries broke into the building and captured the Government of National Defence, while making repeated demands for the establishment of a communard government. The existing government was rescued by soldiers who broke into the Hôtel de Ville via an underground tunnel built in 1807, which still connects the Hôtel de Ville with a nearby barracks. On 18 January 1871, crowds gathered outside the building to protest against speculated surrender to the Prussians, and were dispersed by soldiers firing from the building, who inflicted several casualties. The Paris Commune chose the Hôtel de Ville as its headquarters, and as anti-Commune troops approached the building, Commune extremists set fire to the Hôtel de Ville destroying almost all extant public records from the French Revolutionary period. The blaze swallowed the building from the inside, leaving only an empty stone shell.
L'Hotel De Ville Hours of Operation:
Mon-Sat: 10:00-18:00
Closed: Sundays and public holidays
Admission Fee for the L'Hotel De Ville :
All temporary exhibitions free of charge
Getting to the L'Hotel De Ville:
By metro;
Hôtel de Ville
By RER;
Châtelet Les Halles