Place Louis-le-Grand

Rue de Castiglione, close view of building facing street; Place Vendôme is a square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France, located to the north of the Tuileries Gardens and east of the Église de la Madeleine. As in the Place des Victoires, Hardouin Mansart used the traditional Italian façade design of a giant pilaster order over a rusticated, arcaded ground floor in the first version (1685) of his plan for the Place Vendôme (formerly Place Louis-le-Grand), which proposed an arcaded square with buildings housing the royal library and academies. Due to financial difficulties this was not executed, and only in 1699 was a revised version built by Hardouin Mansart. The final form of the Place Vendôme incorporates bevelled interior corners to the rectangular plan, which has only two openings, one at each end, forming a principal axis. The elements of the earlier façade design remained unchanged, with elegant, restrained, slightly projecting classical Corinthian temple fronts placed at the centres of the long sides and in the bevelled corners; round-headed dormer windows have curved frames that hint at the Baroque. Originally the square had an equestrian statue of Louis XIV by François Girardon (1699, destroyed); now the Vendôme Column stands in the square. Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.oxfordartonline.com/ (accessed 7/15/2010