Hôtel de Ville: The Palace of the People of Paris

Why is it significant?

Stand in the wide square in front of the Hôtel de Ville and take in that enormous palace of pale stone, bristling with statues, turrets and dormer windows, the French flag flying above the clock. It looks like a château from the age of Francis the First.

Key Facts

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Stand in the wide square in front of the Hôtel de Ville and take in that enormous palace of pale stone, bristling with statues, turrets and dormer windows, the French flag flying above the clock. It looks like a château from the age of Francis the First. In fact almost everything you see was built in the 1870s and 1880s... a careful copy of a palace that burned. For centuries this square was the Place de Grève, a sandy strand sloping down to the Seine, where boats unloaded wood and wheat. Men without work gathered here every morning hoping to be hired for the day, and that is where French gets its expression for going on strike: faire grève. It was also the city's place of execution. In 1610 François Ravaillac, the man who stabbed King Henry the Fourth, was torn apart by horses here in front of an enormous crowd. The city government has sat on this spot since 1357, when the provost of the merchants, Étienne Marcel, bought a house here, the House with Pillars, and stood up to the royal heir in the name of Paris. His equestrian statue stands on the river side of the building. A grand Renaissance city hall was begun in 1533. Then, in May 1871, in the last days of the Paris Commune, the Communards set it on fire, and centuries of the city's records burned with it, among them the registers of births, marriages and deaths of generations of Parisians. The Third Republic rebuilt it, bigger and grander, and inaugurated the new palace in 1882. Look at the façades: they are lined with more than a hundred statues of famous people connected with the city. And this building has seen the city's great moments. On 25 August 1944, as Paris rose against the German occupation, Charles de Gaulle came here and spoke the words every French schoolchild learns: Paris outraged, Paris broken, Paris martyred... but Paris liberated. Executions, strikes, fire and liberation, all on one square. Now cross rue de Rivoli and walk north up rue des Archives, into the Marais. The name means the marsh: in the Middle Ages this was soggy ground and market gardens beyond the river bank... and it went on to become the most aristocratic address in France.