Jean-Jacques Aillagon, former culture minister under 2002-2005 French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, was just days away from having his photo taken with the mayor of Paris, holding up the 12 recommendations for the redevelopment of the Place de la Concorde, when he made a confession. When, in March, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo appointed him to be the chairman of the commission, which would be responsible for defining the rules of an architecture competition aimed at reconnecting the square with its past while adapting it to the summer heat, he did not believe in the idea of planting trees for a second. "A contradiction in terms," he insisted, adding that the royal square should remain mineral, as it had always been. On Tuesday, June 18, the art history specialist confessed to his mistake. La Concorde, the largest traffic circle in Paris, needs to be transformed with greenery: Both to adapt to the climate, and also as a reminder of its history.
This expansive square, flat, grey and paved as it stands today, represents only a brief interlude in the site's lifespan. The city hall's cultural affairs department has recovered plans, paintings and photos. The square's dimensions are intact: 7.79 hectares stretching from the Tuileries park to the Champs-Elysées boulevard, from the American Embassy to the Seine river. In the 18th century, however, when architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel designed the esplanade to house the King's statue, he lined this former vacant lot with ditches.
Soon thereafter, the ditches were landscaped and turned into gardens. A century later, the first competition organized to renovate the site had called for their preservation. This lasted until 1852, when French emperor Napoleon III judged them to be "dangerous and detrimental to growing traffic" and ordered them to be filled in. The advent of the automobile thereby transformed the Place Royale into a giant traffic circle.
One of the commission's key recommendations was to break the waterproofing on half of the square, one of Paris's biggest heat islands. Data provided by the Paris Urban Planning Agency (APUR) documented the state of the square's subsoil: Almost half of the old ditches have deep subsoil layers, a third are more than 2 meters deep, and a quarter lie between 50 centimeters and 1 meter deep.
This recommendation, just like the others, was adopted unanimously. Ten of those – the other two are covered by a charter – are to be included in the criteria for the architecture competition for the square's renovation, which was launched at the end of May. Five teams will be chosen in September, and the winner announced in January. Public works on the square are due to begin in 2026.
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