THE MADELEINE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD
ARRONDISSEMENT VIII. (ÉLYSÉE)
The handsome church which forms so distinct a feature of this quarter of
the city was begun to be built in the year 1764 to replace an older
church, originally a convent chapel, in the district known as Ville
l’Evêque because the bishop of Paris had a country house--a
villa--there.
The Revolution found the new church unfinished, and when Napoléon was in
power he decided to complete the structure as a temple of military glory
to be dedicated to the Grande Armée. Napoléon fell. The building was
restored to the ecclesiastical authorities and its construction as a
church, dedicated to Ste. Marie-Madeleine, completed during the years
1828-42. Begun on the model of the Pantheon at Rome, the building was
finished on the plan of the Maison Carrée at Nismes. It is 108 mètres in
length, 43 m. broad. The fine Corinthian columns we see are forty-eight
in number. The great bronze doors are the largest church doors known.
Their splendid bas-reliefs are the work of Triquetti (1838). Specimens
of every kind of marble found in France have been used in the grand
interior. In the wonderful painting “l’Histoire de la France
Chrétienne,” we see in the centre Pope Pius VII and Napoléon in the act
of making the Concordat, surrounded by King Clovis, Charlemagne, St.
Louis, Jeanne d’Arc, Henri IV, Sully, Louis XIII, etc. The statues and
other decorations are all modern, the work of the most distinguished
artists of the nineteenth century. The abbé Deguerry, vicar in 1871,
shot by the Communards, is buried there in the chapel Notre-Dame de la
Compassion.
The _place_ surrounding the church dates from 1815. At No. 7 lived
Amédée Thierry (1820-29), Meilhac, and during fifty years Jules Simon
who died there in 1896. We see his statue before the house. Behind the
church we see the statue of Lavoisier, put to death at the Revolution.
The streets opening out of Place de la Madeleine are modern, cut across
ancient convent lands, and the old farm lands of les Mathurins. No. 5
Rue Tronchet is said to have been at one time the home of Chopin. Rue de
l’Arcade, of yore “Chemin d’Argenteuil”--Argenteuil Road--got its name
from an arcade destroyed in the time of Napoléon III, which stretched
across the gardens of the convent of Ville l’Evêque, where the houses 15
and 18 now stand. Several of the houses we see along the street date
from the eighteenth century, none are of special interest.
Rue Pasquier brings us to the Square Louis XVI and the chapelle
Expiatoire built on the graveyard of the Madeleine. In that graveyard,
made in 1659 upon the convent kitchen garden, were buried many of the
most noted men and women of the tragic latter years of the eighteenth
century. There were laid the numerous victims of the fire on the Place
de la Concorde, at that time Place Louis XVI, caused by fireworks at the
festivities after the wedding of Louis XVI. The thousand Swiss Guards
who died to defend the Tuileries, Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, Mme
Roland, Charlotte Corday and hundreds more of the _guillotinés_ were
buried there. When, in 1794, the churchyard was disaffected and put up
for sale, the whole territory was bought by an ardent royalist and under
Louis XVIII the chapel we see was built; an altar in the crypt marks the
spot where some of the remains of the King and Queen were found.
Rue d’Anjou, opened in 1649, formerly Rue des Morfondus, has known many
illustrious inhabitants: Madame Récamier, the comtesse de Boigne, etc.
La Fayette died at No. 8 (1834). No. 22 dates from 1763. The Mairie was
originally the hôtel de Lorraine. Many of the ancient _hôtels_ have been
replaced by modern erections.
In Rue de Surène, in olden days Suresnes Road, we see at No. 23 the
handsome hôtel de Lamarck-Arenberg, dating from 1775, and the petit
hôtel du Marquis de l’Aigle of about the same date.
Rue de la Ville l’Évêque dates from the seventeenth century, recalling
by its name the days when, from the thirteenth century onwards, the
bishops of Paris had a rural habitation, a villa and perhaps a farm in
this then outlying district. Around the _villeta episcopi_ grew up a
little township included within the city bounds in the time of Louis XV.
The ancient thirteenth-century church, dedicated like its modern
successor to Ste-Marie-Madeleine, stood on the site of No. 11 of the
modern boulevard Malesherbes. The Benedictine convent close by, of later
foundation, built like the greater number of the most noted Paris
convents in the early years of the seventeenth century, was suppressed
and razed at the Revolution. Many noted persons of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries had their residences in the Ville l’Evêque. Guizot
died there in 1875. No. 16, l’hôtel du Maréchal Suchet, is now an
Institut. No. 20 the _hôtel_ of Prince Arenberg. No. 25-27 are ancient.
Rue Boissy d’Anglas, opened in the eighteenth century, bearing for long
three different names in the different parts of its course, records in
its present name that of a famous conventional (1756-1826). In the
well-known provision shop, Corcellet, Avenue de l’Opéra, we may see the
portrait of the famous Gourmet, who in pre-Revolution days lived at the
fine mansion No. 1, now the Cercle artistique “l’Épatant,” and carried
out there his luxurious and ultra-refined taste in the matter of food
and the manner of serving it. Horses to whom a _recherché cuisine_ could
not be offered, had their oats served to them in silver mangers.
Sequestered at the Revolution, it still remained the abode of a gourmet
of repute; sold later to the State, it became an Embassy, then a club.
No. 12 dates from Louis XV and has been the abode of several families of
historic name. Prince de Beauvau lived there in more modern days and
baron Hausmann died there. Lulli died at No. 28 (1637). Curious old
houses are seen in the Cité Berreyer and Cité du Retiro.
Rue Royale, in its earliest days Chemin des Remparts--Rampart Road--for
the third Porte St-Honoré in the city wall was at the point where it
meets the Rue du Faubourg, became a street--Rue Royale-des-Tuileries--in
the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1792 it became Rue de la
Révolution, then, from 1800 to 1814, Rue de la Concorde. Most of the
houses we see there date from the eighteenth century, built by the
architect Gabriel, who lived at No. 8. Mme de Staël lived for a time at
No. 6. This leads us to Place de la Concorde, built by Gabriel; it was
opened in 1763 as Place Louis XV, to become a hundred and thirty years
later Place de la Révolution, with in its centre a statue of Liberty
replacing the overturned statue of the King. Its name was changed
several times during the years that followed, till in 1830 the name
given by the Convention was restored for good. In olden days it was
surrounded by moats and had on one side a _pont-tournant_; the _place_
was the scene of national fêtes in times past as it is in our own times.
It was also not unfrequently the scene of tragedy and death. The
guillotine was set up there on January 21, 1793, for the execution of
the King. Marie-Antoinette, Charlotte Corday and many other notable
victims of the Revolution were beheaded there ... in the end,
Robespierre himself. In 1814 the Allies of those days gathered there for
the celebration of a grand _Te-Deum_. The statues we see surrounding the
vast place personify the great towns of France--that of Strasbourg the
most remarkable. The fine “Chevaux de Marly” at the starting-point of
the Champs-Elysées are the work of Coustou, Mercury and la Renommée, at
the entrance of the Tuileries gardens, of Coysevox. Handsome buildings
(eighteenth century) flank the _place_ on its northern side. The
Ministère de la Marine was in pre-Revolution days the _garde meuble_ of
the Kings of France. Splendid jewels, including the famous diamond known
as le Regent, were stolen thence in 1792. What is now the Automobile
Club was for many years the official residence of the papal Nuncio.
L’hôtel Crillon, built as a private mansion, was for a time the Spanish
Embassy; most of the beautiful woodwork for which it was noted has been
sold and taken away.