Historic Paris by Jetta Sophia Wolff

L’HÔTEL DE VILLE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS The Hôtel de Ville, which gives its name to the arrondissement, is a modern erection built as closely as possible on the plan and from the designs of the fine Renaissance structure of the sixteenth century burnt to the ground by the Communards in 1871. Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, where it stands, was until 1830 Place de Grève, the Place du Port de Grève of anterior days, days going back to Roman times. Like the Paris Cathedral, the hôtel de Ville is closely linked with the most marked events of French history. The first hôtel de Ville was known as la Maison-aux-Piliers, previously l’hôtel des Dauphins du Viennois, bought in 1357 by Étienne Marcel, Prévôt des Marchands, of historic memory (_see_ p. 39), whose statue we see in the garden. The first stone of the fine building burnt in 1871 was laid by François I in 1533, its last one in the time of Henri IV. On the Square before it executions took place, for offences criminal, political, religious, by burning, strangling, hanging and the guillotine. In its centre stood a tall Gothic cross reared upon eight steps, at the foot of which the condemned said their last prayers. The guillotine first set up there in 1792 was soon moved about, as we know, to different points of the city, when used for political victims. Common-law criminals continued to expiate their evil deeds on Place de Grève. It was a comparatively small _place_ in those days. Its enlargement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries caused the destruction of many old streets, in one of which was the famous Maison de la Lanterne. Close up against the Hôtel de Ville stood in past days the old church St-Jean-en-Grève and a hospice; both were incorporated in the town hall by Napoléon I. The entire building was destroyed in 1871, but the present structure is remarkably fine in every part, both within and without, and the Salle St-Jean, memorizing the church once there, is splendidly decorated. The Avenue Victoria, on the site of ancient streets, memorizes the visit of the English Queen in