Place de la Libération

What you will see

Stand in the middle of the hemicycle and turn slowly. On one side rises the classical facade of the palace, now the town hall and the Fine Arts Museum, with the Tour Philippe le Bon behind it. On the other runs the curve of arcaded houses, with their café and restaurant terraces. Jets of water spring straight from the paving, and in summer children run between them. At night the facades are lit and the square is at its most elegant.

History

The square was laid out between 1686 and 1689 to plans by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, on the site of a small square and old buildings of the ducal palace. It was designed as a setting for a bronze equestrian statue of Louis XIV by Étienne Le Hongre. The statue weighed 26 tonnes. Its journey from Paris began in 1692 but stopped at Auxerre, where it stayed for 27 years before reaching Dijon in 1720. It was inaugurated in 1725 and destroyed on 15 August 1792, and part of its bronze went to the cannon foundries of Le Creusot.

The square's name followed the politics of France. Place Royale became Place d'Armes in 1792, Place Impériale in 1804, Place Royale again in 1814 and Place d'Armes once more in 1831. The town council named it after Marshal Pétain in 1941, and it took its present name at the Liberation of Dijon in September 1944. General de Gaulle spoke here on 23 October 1944. Canon Félix Kir, later mayor of Dijon, lived at No. 4 and survived an assassination attempt there in January 1944.

The facades of the arcaded houses around the hemicycle have been classified as historic monuments since 1937. In 2005 and 2006 the architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte turned the square, then a car park, into a pedestrian space. He replaced the tarmac with Comblanchien stone and added three fountains whose water is collected and recycled. Archaeological remains under the paving ruled out planting trees.