The Place du Carrousel (French pronunciation: [plasdykaʁuzɛl] ) is a public square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, located at the open end of the courtyard of the Louvre Palace, a space occupied, prior to 1883, by the Tuileries Palace. Sitting directly between the museum and the Tuileries Garden, the Place du Carrousel delineates the eastern end of the gardens just as the Place de la Concorde defines its western end.
The name "carrousel" refers to a type of military dressage, an equine demonstration now commonly called military drill. The Place du Carrousel was named in 1662, when it was used for such a display by Louis XIV. [1]
On 5 October 1789, a mob from Paris descended upon Versailles and forced the royal family — Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and their children, along with the Count of Provence (later King Louis XVIII), his wife Marie Joséphine of Savoy, and Madame Elisabeth, the youngest sister of the King — to move to Paris under the watchful eye of the National Guard. The King and Queen were installed in the Tuileries Palace under surveillance. During this time, there were many plots designed to help members of the royal family escape from France. The Queen rejected several because she would not leave without the King. Other opportunities to rescue the family were ultimately frittered away by the indecisive king. After many delays, an escape was eventually attempted on 21 June 1791, but failed when the entire family was captured twenty-four hours later at Varennes and taken back to Paris within a week.
On 20 June 1792, "a mob of terrifying aspect" broke into the Tuileries and made the King wear the red Phrygian cap to show his loyalty to the revolution.
The vulnerability of the King was exposed on 10 August of that year when an armed mob, on the verge of forcing its way into the Tuileries Palace, forced the King and the royal family to seek refuge at the Legislative Assembly. An hour and a half later, the palace was invaded by the mob. They massacred the Swiss Guards, who fought with dedication and desperation. Some seven hundred were killed, and their bloodied bodies decorated the yard in front of the palace (in the place then known as the Cours du Carrousel), in the gardens of the palace, and along the banks of the Seine. On 13 August, the royal family was imprisoned in the tower of the Temple in the Le Marais district, under conditions considerably harsher than their previous confinement in the Tuileries.
On 21 August 1792, the guillotine was erected in the Place du Carrousel, and it remained there, with two short interruptions, until 11 May 1793. In total, thirty-five people were guillotined there.
On 2 August 1793, at the former site of the guillotine, a wooden pyramid was constructed as a tribute to Jean-Paul Marat. It bore an inscription: "To the spirit of the late Marat, 13 July, year I. From his underground tomb, he still makes the traitors tremble. A treacherous hand thwarted the affections of the people." There was also an exhibit of the famous hip bath of Marat and his desk where some of his most impassioned polemics were drafted. These items stayed in place until 9 Thermidor Year II (28 July 1794).
During the revolution of 1848, the Tuileries Palace was looted and severely damaged by rioters. On 23 May 23, 1871, during the suppression of the Paris Commune, twelve men under the orders of a Communard, Dardelle, set the Tuileries on fire at seven in the evening, using petroleum, liquid tar, and turpentine. The fire lasted for forty-eight hours and entirely consumed the palace. The ruins of the Tuileries stood on the site for eleven years. In 1882, the French National Assembly voted for the demolition of the ruins, and, despite much contrary sentiment, this was accomplished in 1883. The salvageable remains of the building were sold to a private entrepreneur.
Once the palace had been cleared away, the ground, which had been known as the Place du Carrousel since 1662, could, once again, be used as a public square.
With the disappearance of the palace, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, built between 1806 and 1808 to serve as an entrance of honor at the Tuileries, became the dominant feature of the Place du Carrousel. [2] It is a triumphal arch that was commissioned in 1806 to commemorate Napoleon's military victories of the previous year. The more famous Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile nearby was designed in the same year, but it took thirty years to build, and it is about twice as massive.
This site is served by the metro station named Palais Royal - Musée du Louvre.
The Axe historique refers to a straightly aligned series of thoroughfare streets, squares, monuments and buildings that extend from the centre of Paris, France, to the west-northwest of the city. It is also known as the Voie Triomphale.
The Place de la Concorde is a public square in Paris, France. Measuring 7.6 ha in area, it is the largest square in the French capital. It is located in the city's eighth arrondissement, at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées.
The 1st arrondissement of Paris is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, this arrondissement is colloquially referred to as le premier. It is governed locally together with the 2nd, 3rd and 4th arrondissement, with which it forms the 1st sector of Paris (Paris-Centre).
The Tuileries Garden is a public garden between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France. Created by Catherine de' Medici as the garden of the Tuileries Palace in 1564, it was opened to the public in 1667 and became a public park after the French Revolution. Since the 19th century, it has been a place for Parisians to celebrate, meet, stroll and relax. During the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, it was the site of the Olympic and Paralympic cauldron.
The Tuileries Palace was a royal and imperial palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the Seine, directly in front of the Louvre Palace. It was the Parisian residence of most French monarchs, from Henry IV to Napoleon III, until it was burned by the Paris Commune in 1871.
The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel is a triumphal arch in Paris, located in the Place du Carrousel. It is an example of Neoclassical architecture in the Corinthian order. It was built between 1806 and 1808 to commemorate Napoleon's military victories in the Wars of the Third and Fourth Coalitions. The Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, at the far end of the Champs-Élysées, is about twice the size; designed in the same year but not completed until 1836.
Baron François Joseph Bosio was a Monegasque sculptor who achieved distinction in the first quarter of the nineteenth century with his work for Napoleon and for the restored French monarchy.
Pierre Cartellier was a French sculptor.
The Musée Carnavalet in Paris is dedicated to the history of the city. The museum occupies two neighboring mansions: the Hôtel Carnavalet and the former Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau. On the advice of Baron Haussmann, the civil servant who transformed Paris in the latter half of the 19th century, the Hôtel Carnavalet was purchased by the Municipal Council of Paris in 1866; it was opened to the public in 1880. By the latter part of the 20th century, the museum was full to capacity. The Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau was annexed to the Carnavalet and opened to the public in 1989.
Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine was a French neoclassical architect, interior decorator, designer and artist.
The Louvre Palace, often referred to simply as the Louvre, is an iconic French palace located on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris, occupying a vast expanse of land between the Tuileries Gardens and the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. Originally a defensive castle, it has served several government-related functions in the past, including intermittently as a royal residence between the 14th and 18th centuries. It is now mostly used by the Louvre Museum, which first opened there in 1793.
François-Frédéric Lemot was a French sculptor, working in the Neoclassical style.
The Carrousel du Louvre is an underground shopping mall in Paris, France, managed by Unibail-Rodamco. The name refers to two nearby sites, the Louvre museum and the Place du Carrousel. The mall contains a famous skylight, La Pyramide Inversée, which plays an important role in the best-selling 2003 book The Da Vinci Code.
The Pont du Carrousel is a bridge in Paris, which spans the River Seine between the Quai des Tuileries and the Quai Voltaire.
The Pavillon de Flore, part of the Louvre Palace in Paris, France, stands at the southwest end of the Louvre, near the Pont Royal. It was originally constructed in 1607–1610, during the reign of Henry IV, as the corner pavilion between the Tuileries Palace to the north and the Louvre's Grande Galerie to the east. The pavilion was entirely redesigned and rebuilt by Hector-Martin Lefuel in 1864–1868 in a highly decorated Second Empire style. Arguably the most famous sculpture on the exterior of the Louvre, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's Triumph of Flora, was added below the central pediment of the south façade at this time. The Tuileries Palace was burned by the Paris Commune in 1871, and a north façade, similar to the south façade, was added to the pavilion by Lefuel in 1874–1879. Currently, the Pavillon de Flore is part of the Louvre Museum.
The Quai des Tuileries is a quay on the Right Bank of the River Seine in Paris, France, along the stretch close to where the Palais du Louvre and the Quai François Mitterrand is situated, in the 1st arrondissement.
Paris in the 18th century was the second-largest city in Europe, after London, with a population of about 600,000 people. The century saw the construction of Place Vendôme, the Place de la Concorde, the Champs-Élysées, the church of Les Invalides, and the Panthéon, and the founding of the Louvre Museum. Paris witnessed the end of the reign of Louis XIV, was the center stage of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, saw the first manned flight, and was the birthplace of high fashion and the modern restaurant and bistro.
The Louis XIV style or Louis Quatorze, also called French classicism, was the style of architecture and decorative arts intended to glorify King Louis XIV and his reign. It featured majesty, harmony and regularity. It became the official style during the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715), imposed upon artists by the newly established Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture and the Académie royale d'architecture. It had an important influence upon the architecture of other European monarchs, from Frederick the Great of Prussia to Peter the Great of Russia. Major architects of the period included François Mansart, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, Robert de Cotte, Pierre Le Muet, Claude Perrault, and Louis Le Vau. Major monuments included the Palace of Versailles, the Grand Trianon at Versailles, and the Church of Les Invalides (1675–1691).
The Grand Louvre refers to the decade-long project initiated by French President François Mitterrand in 1981 of expanding and remodeling the Louvre – both the building and the museum – by moving the French Finance Ministry, which had been located in the Louvre's northern wing since 1871, to a different location. The centerpiece of the Grand Louvre is the Louvre Pyramid designed by Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei, which was also the project's most controversial component. The Grand Louvre was substantially completed in the late 1990s, even though its last elements were only finalized in the 2010s.
The Pavillon de Marsan or Marsan Pavilion was built in the 1660s as the northern end of the Tuileries Palace in Paris, and reconstructed in the 1870s after the Tuileries burned down at the end of the Paris Commune. Following the completion of the joining of the Louvre and the Tuileries in the 1850s and the demolition of the Tuileries' remains in the early 1880s, it is now the northwestern tip of the Louvre Palace. Since 1897 it has been part of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, a separate institution from the Louvre.