Hôtel des Invalides: Louis XIV's Home for Old Soldiers
Why is it significant?
Face the immense façade, nearly two hundred metres of stone, with rows of cannon lined up along the moat in front of it like sleeping dogs. It looks like a palace. It was built as a home for old and wounded soldiers... and it still is one.
Key Facts
| Place | Hôtel des Invalides: Louis XIV's Home for Old Soldiers |
|---|---|
| Address | 129 Rue de Grenelle, 75007 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.85780, 2.31270 |
| Part of Walk | Iron, Glory and Gold: The Eiffel Tower, Trocadéro & Les Invalides in Paris |
| Generated | Generated |
Face the immense façade, nearly two hundred metres of stone, with rows of cannon lined up along the moat in front of it like sleeping dogs. It looks like a palace. It was built as a home for old and wounded soldiers... and it still is one.
Before Louis XIV, a soldier who lost a leg or simply grew too old to fight was often left to beg in the street. In 1670 the Sun King decided that this was unworthy of his glory, and ordered a royal hospital for veterans. The architect Libéral Bruant built it in record time, and the first residents moved in around 1674. At its peak it housed several thousand men, with workshops, a church, kitchens and a strict, almost monastic routine. To this day a part of the complex is a working hospital for disabled veterans.
Walk into the main courtyard one day and look up at the dormer windows on the roof. On one of them the sculptor carved a wolf peering out over the courtyard. The story goes that it is a pun on the name of the powerful war minister Louvois, who ran the project: loup voit, the wolf sees. A minister who was not allowed to put his name on the king's building found another way to sign it.
Fast forward to the morning of the 14th of July 1789. A crowd of Parisians looking for weapons swarmed in here and carried off tens of thousands of muskets from the cellars. But muskets need powder, and the powder was kept somewhere else... in a fortress on the other side of the city called the Bastille. So in a sense, the French Revolution started its most famous day right here.
Today the buildings also hold the Army Museum, one of the largest military museums in the world, with armour, cannons and Napoleon's own grey coat and famous hat. Look north and the green esplanade runs all the way to the river, one of the grandest open spaces in Paris. Now leave the soldiers behind and walk west along the Rue de Grenelle to the last stop, a street where Paris simply goes shopping for dinner.