Promenades d'Anglais sur la place Louis XV ou les aperçus critiques d'un mode d'embellissement «à la française»

Abstract

British visitors to the place Louis XV or critical appraisals of French town planning. The recently-inaugurated place Louis XV (now place de la Concorde), designed by Jacques-Ange Gabriel, at the heart of the promenade from the Tuileries to the Champs-Elysées, rarely failed to impress the numerous British travellers to Paris between 1763 and 1815. More than sixty authors from diverse social backgrounds, keen to mix in high society or take exercise, or drawn by the symbolic aura of this historic space, lingered here and wrote their impressions in their travel accounts. While most of them hardly paid attention to the central equestrian statue of Louis XV, Bouchardon's masterpiece, finished by Pigalle and destroyed in 1792, they were all struck by the open vista provided by this huge oval crossroads which they were reluctant to call a "square". The British travellers, observing the spectacular perspective and views of the town, the way it was integrated into its natural environment and turned its back on the closed public square, realised that the place Louis XV was part of a new conception of the town.