The public square in the
4th arrondissement of
Paris that is now the
Place de l'Hôtel de Ville (City Hall Plaza) was, before 1802, called the
Place de Grève. The French word, "grève", means "a flat area covered with gravel or sand situated on the shores of the ocean or on the banks of a river." The location presently occupied by the square was the point on the sandy right bank of the river
Seine where the first riverine harbor of Paris was established.
The Place de Grève
Later it was used as a public meeting-place and also as a location where unemployed people gathered to seek work. This circumstance accounts for the current
French expressions,
être en grève (to be on strike) and
faire (la) grève (to strike, literally: "to do a strike").
However, the principal reason why the
place de Grève is remembered is that it was the site of most of the public
executions in early Paris. The
gallows and the
pillory stood there.
The highest-profile executions took place on the
grève, including the gruesome deaths of the
assassins Jacques Clément,
François Ravaillac, and
Robert–François Damiens, as well as the bandit-rebel
Guy Éder de La Fontenelle. In 1310 the Place de Grève was also the site of the execution of the beguine heretic
Marguerite Porete. In the words of
Victor Hugo (in
The Hunchback of Notre Dame), the
grève was "the symbol of
medieval and
ancien régime justice: brutal, corrupt, and inadequate."
Location
The southern end of the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, the end closer to the river, is on the right-bank side of the
Pont d'Arcole, which crosses eighty metres of water to reach the island, Île de la Cité, in the middle of the Seine. At this point on the riverbank, the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville is formed by the convergence of three streets: the Quai de l'Hôtel de Ville, the Quai de Gesvres, and the Rue du Renard. The Rue de Renard, which passes in front of the Parisian city-hall building, forfeits its name for one city block, adopting instead "Place de l'Hôtel de Ville" addresses.
Metro station
The Place de l'Hôtel de Ville is:
left|18px left|18px It is served by lines
1 and
11.
