House and Garden 
an arrangement of depressed parterres. 
Moreover he allowed nothing to appear in 
either axis except the equestrian statue of 
Louis XV., which was easily dominated by 
the architectural masses. The square as¬ 
sumed the name Place de la Concorde in the 
Revolution and retained the form which 
Gabriel gave it until 1836, when, under 
Louis-Philippe, the vast mass of the obelisk 
of Luxor and its attendant fountains was 
planted in the center and the parterres of Ga¬ 
briel’s design destroyed. In considering the 
eighteenth century scheme for the Place de 
la Concorde it should be remembered that 
the design of Coutant d’lvry for the Made¬ 
leine called for a dome which would have 
made a much more interesting center for the 
two colonnades on the northern side than 
the present design. 
PLACE DU TRONE (DE LA NATION) AND COURS 
DE VINCENNES 
Having established the great axis leading 
from the Tuileries to 
Neuilly, it was natural 
that the classic designers 
of the period should wish 
to carry it through the 
city. All that they ac¬ 
complished, however, 
was the determination of 
its direction at the east¬ 
ern end, leaving future 
generations to build the 
connecting links. An ir¬ 
regular site for a large 
place to balance the Place 
de l’Etoile was chosen in 
the Rue du Faubourg 
Saint-Antoine, beyond 
the abbey of that name, 
for which a fine arch was 
designed by Claude Per- 
rault, the architect of the 
Louvre facade. The first 
stone of this work was 
laid by Louis XIV. in 
1670, but it was soon 
abandoned and its place 
taken by a plaster model 
which in time disappear¬ 
ed. The plan of Jouvin 
de Rochefort (1672) 
which gives our first pic¬ 
ture of the Place du Trone, at the same 
time sketches plainly the scheme for the 
Avenue de Vincennes, or, as we call it now, 
Cours de Vincennes, having the same form 
as the Avenue de Neuilly. The construc¬ 
tion of the Rue de Rivoli and the im¬ 
provement of the Rue Saint-Antoine and 
the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine in 
the reign of Napoleon III. connected the 
Place du Trone with the Place de l’Etoile in 
a way which is convenient enough, but prob¬ 
ably far less dignified than the original de¬ 
signers would have desired. The Place du 
Trone (now de la Nation) appears in the later 
maps in the form which it has at present. 
THE LUXEMBOURG-OBSERVATOIRE AXIS 
In addition to the great lines which we 
have described, various lesser axes appear 
in other parts of the city in connection with 
important monuments. 
In the later Roman occupation the por¬ 
tion of Lutece lying in the southwestern 
angle formed by the road 
to Montrouge and that to 
Vaugirard was occupied 
by a pretorial camp. In 
1257 a large part of it 
was taken up by the 
monastery of the Char- 
treux, which remained 
until it was destroyed by 
the Revolution in 1790. 
About the middle of the 
sixteenth century Robert 
de Harley bought prop¬ 
erty in this area on the 
north side of the Rue de 
Vaugirard, which passed 
in 1583 to the Due de 
Piney-Luxembourg, 
whose name is still at¬ 
tached to it. Marie de 
Medici, the widow of 
Henry IV., bought the 
land in 1613, and her 
architect, Salomon de 
Brosse, built upon it be¬ 
tween 1615 and 1620 the 
splendid palace which we 
now call the Luxem¬ 
bourg, the most com¬ 
plete and perfect, if not 
the largest, monument of 
235 
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PLAN OF THE LUXEMBOURG GARDEN IN 
THE REIGN OF LOUIS-PHILIPPE 
From Gisors 
