Tight-Lipped

Paris had its fair share of squares open to the skies, marking the junction of several streets, offering fine perspectives of the buildings that surrounded them, but almost all of them were exactly that – either square or rectangular. Not so the place des Victoires, a perfect oval that stood on the border of the first and second arrondissements, allowing the statue of Louis XIV at its centre to peer imperiously down the six separate streets to which it gave birth, keeping an eye on the heart of the capital he had so distrusted. Constructed during the Sun King’s reign, it was surrounded by massive stone-built hôtels particuliers with arched entranceways providing access to generously dimensioned upper floors. In a city that the nineteenth century had claimed for its own, the place was a reminder that schemes of grandiose urban development had existed long before Haussmann was given carte blanche by Napoleon III.