Place de Fontenoy & UNESCO
Why is it significant?
Here the grand royal stone gives way to concrete. On one side of this half-moon square stands the back of the military school, all eighteenth-century dignity. On the other side, across the road, is a curving modernist building raised on concrete stilts.
Key Facts
| Place | Place de Fontenoy & UNESCO |
|---|---|
| Address | Place de Fontenoy, 75007 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.85120, 2.30670 |
| Part of Walk | Iron, Glory and Gold: The Eiffel Tower, Trocadéro & Les Invalides in Paris |
| Generated | Generated |
Here the grand royal stone gives way to concrete. On one side of this half-moon square stands the back of the military school, all eighteenth-century dignity. On the other side, across the road, is a curving modernist building raised on concrete stilts. That is the headquarters of UNESCO, the United Nations agency for education, science and culture.
It was inaugurated in 1958, designed by three architects from three countries: the Hungarian-born American Marcel Breuer, the Italian engineer Pier Luigi Nervi and the Frenchman Bernard Zehrfuss. From above it forms a three-pointed star, a giant letter Y. Inside and in the gardens hang works by some of the great artists of the century, among them a mural by Picasso, and there is a Japanese garden by the sculptor Isamu Noguchi. It was meant to be a building where nations met as equals, in the city that had just lived through occupation.
Now the name of the square. On the 11th of May 1745, at Fontenoy, in what is now Belgium, the French army of Louis XV defeated a coalition of British, Dutch and Hanoverian troops. Legend gives that battle one of history's most famous lines. As the two lines of infantry faced each other, a French officer is said to have raised his hat and called out: Gentlemen of England, fire first. Whether it was courtesy or cunning, since the side that fired first then had to reload under the enemy's volley, nobody can quite agree.
Look at the street signs around you. The avenues running off this square are named after the men of that day: Avenue de Saxe, after Marshal Maurice de Saxe, who won the battle while so ill he was carried around in a wicker cart, and Avenue de Lowendal, after one of his generals. A whole corner of Paris is a monument to one morning in Flanders.
From royal victory to world peace, all in one square. Now head east, along the quiet residential streets, towards the shining golden dome you can already see above the rooftops.