Hôtel de Ville and the Place de Grève

Landmark · Hôtel de Ville (4th)Paris,France

Paris's town hall, rebuilt after the Commune burned it, facing the old riverside square where men waited for work and the city executed people.

The Hôtel de Ville is Paris's town hall, a long Renaissance-style front covered in statues, facing a wide open square on the right bank of the Seine. A hundred and eight Parisians stand in niches along the facade, each named on the stone below. The square in front is paved, flat and in use all year, with a slope you can still feel running down toward the river. It was the Place de Grève for centuries: the landing beach where boats unloaded, where men without work waited to be hired, and where the city carried out its executions. The building behind it was burned by Communard fighters in May 1871, as government troops retook the city, and the city's archives went with it. It was raised again on the same ground, finished in 1892, with the ballroom and the staircases rebuilt grander than they had been. It is a working town hall today. The mayor's offices are inside, and the square in front carries public events through the year.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Find the bronze horseman on the river side — Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants, bought the house on this ground in 1357, and the city's government has never left it since.
The free exhibitions are the way inside — The Salle Saint-Jean puts on shows that anyone can walk into, while the state rooms upstairs are reached only by booked group visits.
The square changes use with the weather — The city runs events on it all year, with a rink in winter and screens in summer, so what you find depends on the month.

Things to do

1
Read the names under the statues
Walk the length of the facade and read the names cut under the figures. The hundred and eight are not only kings and generals: printers, surgeons, chemists and architects are up there, a nineteenth-century verdict on who counted as a great Parisian. Higher up the niches stop being people and turn into French cities, the arts and the sciences.
2
Feel the slope towards the river
Cross the square from the building towards the quay and pay attention to your feet. The ground falls away the whole way down, the shape of the sand and gravel bank that shelved into the Seine before the quay walls closed it off. Boats were run straight up onto that slope and unloaded on it.