Place de la Concorde

Guide preview

The Luxor Obelisk rises at the centre of a vast open square, but Place de la Concorde has carried several meanings.

Quick facts

• The square was created in the late eighteenth century and was a site of Revolutionary executions.
• The Luxor Obelisk was erected in 1836.
• Jacques-Ignace Hittorff gave the square much of its present form between 1836 and 1846.

More places in Paris

museum

Paris, FranceGuide with pass

59 Rivoli

59 Rivoli is an artist-run building on Rue de Rivoli, born from a 1999 occupation of a vacant Haussmann-era property. The City of Paris later secured its artistic use, turning a contested workspace into a public-facing site for studios and exhibitions.

landmark

Paris, FranceGuide with pass

Arc de Triomphe

The Arc de Triomphe was commissioned by Napoleon in 1806 to honor the Grande Armée, but political upheaval stretched construction across three decades. Its location makes it a monument and hub of avenues structuring western Paris.

landmark

Paris, FranceGuide with pass

Arènes de Lutèce

The Arènes de Lutèce is a Gallo-Roman mixed-use amphitheatre with both an arena and a stage. Its unusual layout accommodated different kinds of performance, and its rediscovery during nineteenth-century street works sparked a campaign to preserve the remains.

canal

Paris, FranceGuide with pass

Canal Saint-Martin

Cast-iron footbridges and working locks punctuate this canal’s route through northeastern Paris. Built to improve water supply and navigation, Canal Saint-Martin nearly became an urban expressway in the 1960s, but public opposition helped preserve the waterway.

museum

Paris, FranceGuide with pass

Catacombs of Paris

The Catacombs of Paris are a municipal ossuary inside former limestone quarries beneath the city. Their passages reveal how a public health crisis, urban geology, and changing ideas about death produced one of Paris’s most unusual heritage sites.

museum

Paris, FranceGuide with pass

Centre Pompidou

Centre Pompidou turns its structure outward, exposing pipes, escalators, and circulation on the façade. Conceived as a multidisciplinary cultural center, it challenged the idea that a museum should hide the systems that make it work.