444 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



Louvre to those by Lescot in its court (Figs, i and 295), their detail 

 in each case being characteristic of the century which produced them. 

 The square-headed openings, the niches in square recesses, the archi- 

 traves breaking up into the frieze, the massive consoles, the drapery 

 swags, ''the lavish use of heavy wreaths are all distinctive of the 

 Louis XVI. style. 



The scheme of the Place was completed by a new bridge across the 

 Seine (now Pont de la Concorde) in the axis of the Rue Royale (1787- 

 90) by Perronet. This period is rich in bridges, many of which are 

 of considerable architectural merit, e.g., those of Lavaur (1769), and 

 Navilly (1782), and that of St Laurent at Chalons-sur-Saone (1784). 



PLACE Louis XVI. But for the Revolution, there was some possi- 

 bility of Paris possessing a Place Louis XVI., as well as a Place Louis 

 le Grand and a Place Louis XV. Belanger (1744-1818), architect to 

 the Comte d'Artois, published a new scheme in 1781 for solving the old 

 problem of uniting the Louvre and Tuileries. It comprised an opera 

 house placed between them on a large square, with semicircular ends 

 connecting the Rue St Honore with the quays, and is not without a 

 certain grandeur of conception, but the poverty and frigidity of the 

 architecture show the hand of a designer inferior to Gabriel, and belong 

 to an age when the decline was beginning. 



PROVINCIAL CITY IMPROVEMENTS : TOURS. Much the same may be 

 said of the scheme put into operation at Tours, where the straight Rue 

 Royale was built with uniform elevations, in the axis of a new bridge, 

 at whose head it widens into a small square containing the Hotel de 

 Ville (now museum), and another building symmetrical to it. At 

 Nantes the laying out on uniform lines of the Cours Cambronne and 

 Place Royale came to complete the works begun a generation before 

 by J. J. Gabriel. 



RHEIMS AND ROUEN. The most important examples of the later 

 town planning schemes under Louis XV. were those of Rheims and 

 Rouen. They differ in feeling very widely from similar contemporary 

 work at Nancy and Toulouse. At Rheims a " Place Royale " (begun 

 1756) was designed by Le Gendre in the axis of the Rue Royale and of 

 the older Hotel de Ville. Its uniform elevations are composed in 

 accordance with the usual system, but on severer lines. The order is 

 Doric, and columns are only used in the pavilions, while elsewhere mere 

 strips are substituted for pilasters. At Rouen, on the razing of the 

 old walls, Antoine Le Carpentier (1709-73), a native of the city who had 

 a large practice in Paris and elsewhere, was appointed by the King to 

 draw up a scheme of improvements (1756). He proposed to turn the 

 old market-place into a " Place Royale," planned almost exactly like that 

 of Nancy, and in such a manner that his new Hotel de Ville on its west 

 side should lie in the axis both of the old Rue Grosse Horloge and of 



