The garden at the center of Place des Vosges
Square Louis-XIII, the garden at the heart of Place des Vosges in Paris, began as open sand before Henri IV's brick-and-stone square was enclosed in 1682 with lawns, paths and iron railings. A bronze statue of Louis XIII, erected in 1639, stood at its center until revolutionaries destroyed it in 1792; a marble replacement has stood there since 1825.
A sandy parade ground became an enclosed royal garden
Square Louis-XIII is the garden that fills the middle of Place des Vosges, a square of brick-and-stone houses built for Henri IV. For its first decades this ground was open sand, a place for parades and royal shows. In 1612, Louis XIII, still a boy king, had his engagement to Anne of Austria celebrated here with a grand tournament. Cardinal Richelieu, the king's chief minister, later had a bronze statue of him on horseback set up at the center in 1639, cast by Pierre II Biard using a horse originally meant for a monument to Henry II. It took another forty years for the ground around that statue to become a real garden. In 1682, the square was finally enclosed with iron railings and laid out with lawns and paths. Entry was kept for the well-dressed, with one exception: August 25, the feast day of Saint Louis, when anyone could come in.
Revolutionaries tore down the king's statue and renamed the square
Revolutionaries tore down the statue of Louis XIII in 1792 and wrecked the garden around it. The square lost its royal name too, becoming Place des Vosges in 1800, honoring the first French region to pay the new revolutionary taxes.
A marble king and new fountains made the garden fashionable
The square got its statue back in 1825, a new one in white marble by Charles Dupaty and Jean-Pierre Cortot, showing the king dressed as a Roman emperor. Cortot also built the four fountains that still stand at the garden's corners, fed by water piped in from the Ourcq canal. By then the square around this garden had become one of the most fashionable addresses in Paris. Victor Hugo lived just off it, at the Hôtel Rohan-Guéménée, and wrote plays there including Ruy Blas. In 1954, the garden was formally protected as a historical monument, the status it still holds today.
Paris created its first park guardian post for this garden
The garden had become official city business by the 18th century. In 1738, the very first post of park guardian anywhere in Paris was created for this square, a job to keep the lawns and gravel paths in order.
New trees planted in 1976 still shade the lawns today
The garden was replanted in 1976. Workers took out the old trees and put in Crimean linden trees around the edges, with Indian horse chestnuts at the center, ringing the statue of Louis XIII. That planting is what still stands today, more than 150 trees shading lawns that cover almost three acres.
The four corner fountains still run on water piped in from the Ourcq canal, just as they did when Jean-Pierre Cortot built them in the 1820s. The marble king still sits on his horse at the center, dressed as a Roman emperor, a laurel wreath on his head, enclosed by the same kind of wrought-iron fence his first garden had in 1682. Schoolchildren from a lycée a block away use the lawns for recess. Visitors sit under the trees or cross the gravel paths between the Hôtel de Sully and the Maison de Victor Hugo, both just off the square's edges.
The marble Louis XIII still rides at the center, fenced in iron, among lindens planted in 1976 and fountains fed by canal water.
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