Place Vendôme, Paris Walking Tour, France [HD 4K 60fps]

The Place Vendôme, earlier known as Place Louis-le-Grand, and also as Place Internationale, in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, is located to the north of the Tuileries Gardens and east of the Église de la Madeleine. It is the starting point of the Rue de la Paix. Its regular architecture by Jules Hardouin-Mansart and pedimented screens canted across the corners give the rectangular Place Vendôme the aspect of an octagon. The original Vendôme Column at the centre of the square was erected by Napoleon I to commemorate the Battle of Austerlitz; it was torn down on 16 May 1871, by decree of the Paris Commune, but subsequently re-erected and remains a prominent feature on the square today.
The Place Vendôme was begun in 1698 as a monument to the glory of the armies of Louis XIV, the Grand Monarque, and called Place des Conquêtes, to be renamed Place Louis le Grand, when the conquests proved temporary. An over life-size equestrian statue of the king by François Girardon (1699) was donated by the city authorities and set up in its centre. It is believed to be the first large modern equestrian statue to be cast in a single piece. It was destroyed in the French Revolution; however, there is a small version in the Louvre.
The original column was started in 1806 at Napoleon's direction and completed in 1810. It was modelled after Trajan's Column, to celebrate the victory of Austerlitz; its veneer of 425 spiralling bas-relief bronze plates was made out of cannon taken from the combined armies of Europe, according to his propaganda (the usual figure given is hugely exaggerated: 180 cannon were actually captured at Austerlitz). A statue of Napoleon by Antoine-Denis Chaudet was placed on top of the column. Napoleon is depicted dressed in Roman attire, bare-headed, crowned with laurels, holding a sword in his right hand and a globe surmounted with a statue of Victory (as in Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker) in his left hand.
The place Vendôme has been renowned for its fashionable and deluxe hotels such as the Ritz. Many famous dress designers have had their salons in the square. The only two remaining are the shirtmaker Charvet, at number 28, whose store has been on the place Vendôme since 1877, and the couturier Chéruit, at number 21, reestablished in 2008. Since 1718, the Ministry of Justice, also known as the "Chancellerie", is located at the Hotel de Bourvallais located at numbers 11 and 13. Right on the other side of the place Vendôme, number 14 houses the Paris office of JP Morgan, the investment bank, and number 20 the office of Ardian (formerly AXA Private Equity).
After his death in 1990, American artist Keith Haring was cremated and his ashes were sprinkled out on a hillside near Kutztown, except for one handful, that Yoko Ono brought to the place Vendôme because she believed the spirit of Haring had told her to.
Note also, on the facade of the Ministry of Justice, a standard meter in marble, placed here in 1795 to familiarize Parisians with the (then) new unit of measurement. It’s one of 16 that were installed after, on March 26, 1791, the Académie des Sciences defined the meter for the first time. Up to then under royal rule the country had used all manner of arbitrary measurements to define distance, so this highly scientific new standard had to be conveyed in a physical way. The Paris meters, installed between February of 1796 and December of 1797 in busy street areas, also gave people something with which to copy and confirm their own meters. To define the meter, French astronomers Delambre and Méchain measured 10 millionths of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator through a Paris meridian, which you can still find at the center of the Paris Observatory.

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