Place de la Concorde (formerly called Place Louis XV, Place des Revolutions) is the most famous of the 5 royal squares in Paris. Its octagon is decorated with statues in honor of the cities of the 5th Republic and two Roman fountains, which symbolize the rivers and seas connected with France, and refer us to one of the buildings along the perimeter of the square – the Ministry of the Sea and River Fleet. In addition to it, the square faces the building of the US Embassy, the palace of the Duke of Crillon, which was turned into an expensive hotel at the beginning of the 20th century. The statue of Louis XV in the center of the eponymous square was replaced by a guillotine during the French Revolution.
Here her ideologists were executed, as well as the grandson of Louis XV with his wife Marie Antoinette. After the decline of revolutionary sentiments in 1830, the square acquired its current name. And in 1831 the French authorities received a Luxor obelisk, one of Cleopatra’s needles, as a gift from the Egyptian ruler. The construction weighing more than 200 tons and an age of 3 thousand years was delivered from Africa for 2 years! It is this, and not the statue of the monarch that adorns the center of the square. The Tuileries Garden and the Orangerie Museum of Fine Arts are located next to Place de Concorde. If the aforementioned Rivoli street leads to the eastern part of the city, then the famous Champs Elysees depart in the opposite direction from the square.