Historic Paris by Jetta Sophia Wolff
1860. It was a favourite street for residence in the nineteenth century.
210 words | Chapter 44
Rue Bassano, entirely modern now, existed in part as Ruelle des Jardins
in the early years of the eighteenth century. Rue Galilée was Chemin des
Bouchers in 1790, then Rue du Banquet.
So we come to la Place de l’Étoile, the high ground known in long-gone
times as “la Montagne du Roule.” Till far into the eighteenth century it
was without the city bounds and beyond the Avenue des Champs-Élysées
which ended at Rue de Chaillot, a tree-studded, unlevelled, grass-grown
octagonal stretch of land. Then it was made round and even, and became a
favourite and fashionable promenade, known as l’Étoile de Chaillot, or
the Rond-Point de Neuilly. The site had long been marked out for the
erection of an important monument when Napoléon decreed the construction
there of the Arc de Triomphe. The first stone of the arch was laid by
Chalgrin in 1806, the Emperor and his new wife, on their wedding-day
passed beneath a temporary Arc de Triomphe made of cloth, as the stone
structure was not yet finished. Of the statuary which decorate the arch,
the most noted group is the Départ, by Rude. The frieze shows the going
forth to battle and the return of Napoléon’s armies, with the names of
his generals engraved beneath.[F]
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