General information
The Place de la Concorde is one of the major public squares in Paris, France. In fact, in terms of area, its 86,400 square metres make it the largest square in the French capital. It is located in the city's eighth arrondissement, at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées.


About Place de la Concorde
The Place was designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel in 1755 as a moat-skirted octagon between the Champs-Élysées to the west and the Tuileries Gardens to the east. Filled with statues and fountains, the area was named Place Louis XV to honor the king at that time. The square showcased an equestrian statue of the king, which had been commissioned in 1748 by the city of Paris, sculpted mostly by Edmé Bouchardon, and completed by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle after the death of Bouchardon.

What to Do & See near by

• To the west of the Place is the famous Champs-Élysées.

• To the east of the Place are the Tuileries Gardens. The Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume and the Musée de l'Orangerie, both in the Tuileries Gardens, border the Place

• North of the Place: two identical stone buildings, separated by the Rue Royale. The eastern one houses the French Naval Ministry, and the western one is the Hôtel de Crillon. The Rue Royale leads to the Église de la Madeleine. The Embassy of the United States is located in the corner of the Place at the intersection of Avenue Gabriel and Rue Boissy d'Anglas

• The northeastern corner of the Place is the western end of the Rue de Rivoli

• South of the Place: the River Seine, crossed by the Pont de la Concorde, built by Jean-Rodolphe Perronnet between 1787-1790 and widened in 1930-1932. The Palais Bourbon, home of the French National Assembly, is across the bridge, on the opposite bank of the river

• At each corner of the octagon formed by the Place are statues, created by Jacques Ignace Hittorff, representing the French cities of Lille, Strasbourg, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Nantes, Brest and Rouen. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, when Alsace-Lorraine was lost to Germany, the Strasbourg statue was covered in black mourning crepe on state occasions,[1] and was often decorated with wreaths; this practice did not end until France regained the region following World War I.

Obelisk

The center of the Place is occupied by a giant Egyptian obelisk decorated with hieroglyphics exalting the reign of the pharaoh Ramses II. It is one of two the Egyptian government gave to the French in the nineteenth century. The other one stayed in Egypt, too difficult and heavy to move to France with the technology at that time. In the 1990s, President François Mitterrand gave the second obelisk back to the Egyptians.

How to Get there?

A number of metro stations are stopping at Latin quarter.

1, 8 or 12 : Concorde