442 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



neo-Roman classicism as represented by Servandony. The second 

 competition, held soon after 1750, brought in twenty-eight designs, 

 including some by the original competitors, for a Place Louis XV. 

 between the Tuileries Gardens and the Champs Elysees. None of 

 these, however, completely satisfied the authorities, and Jacques Ange 

 Gabriel, First Architect to the King, himself one of the twenty-eight, 

 was appointed to combine into one scheme the features most admired 

 in the whole set. This revised scheme was approved, and the laying 

 out commenced in 1753, and, though the buildings were not erected 

 till 1761-70, the Place de la Concorde, as it now stands, is the ultimate 

 result. 



GABRIEL'S DESIGN. The designs of the second competition not 

 being extant, it is uncertain how much Gabriel owes to his competitors. 

 But to judge from his contemporary work they had little to teach him. 

 Be this as it may, his appointment gave official support to the puristic 

 movement. The scheme was as follows. The statue, flanked by two 

 fountains, stood on the site of the present obelisk a position occupied 

 during the Reign of Terror by the guillotine in the axis of the Tuileries 

 to the east, of the Champs Elysees to the west, and of a new street in 

 the Rue Royale leading north to join the Boulevards and terminating 

 in a new church to be designed by Contant d'lvry. Round the monu- 

 ment an oblong space, about 810 feet long by 565 feet wide, was formed 

 by enclosing it in a border of sunk gardens surrounded by balustrades. 

 But two of the main approaches being diagonal, viz., the Cours la Reine 

 on the south-west and a projected avenue to correspond with it on the 

 north-west, the angles were cut off at a cant. The eight angles of these 

 diagonal sides were occupied by lodges forming pedestals for allegorical 

 groups, which were never executed, but have since been replaced by 

 seated figures representing eight great cities of France, while the oval 

 windows of the lodges have been filled with marble panels. 



THE TWIN PALACES. Behind the sunk gardens on the north side, 

 the square is closed by two stately buildings, one forming the Garde- 

 meuble de la Couronne (now the Ministry of Marine), and the other 

 divided up into private residences (Fig. 422). The inspiration, as in 

 the case of so many public buildings at the time, came from Perrault's 

 Louvre, which Gabriel was engaged about this time in restoring. That 

 he got much nearer to the spirit of Perrault's design both here and 

 elsewhere, as, for instance, at Compiegne, than was often the case, will 

 appear from a comparison of these buildings with the contemporary 

 Hotels de Ville of Nancy and Toulouse (Figs. 379 and 380). If 

 Gabriel's work has a slightly less impressive and monumental character 

 than Perrault's, this is partly a question of size and site, for though the 

 frontage is 700 feet, as against 565 feet in the case of the Louvre, the 

 building is here broken up into two, and the total height is only 75 feet 



