Hotel de Ville, Paris

The first city council in Paris was elected in 1246, at this time the Parisian trade guilds elected a group of representatives who, aligned to their interests, would consult with the King on behalf of the city’s guild members. The first municipal building was created in 1357 when one of these representatives, Etienne Marcel, bought a house on the Place de Greve.  The house at this time was comprised of two floors, with two towers and a gallery.  The building was known as the ‘House with the Pillars’.  This was used as a meeting room for the city council members, and it stood on the same site where Hotel de Ville now stands.

In 1553, Francis I was the king of France, and he decided to officially allocate a building as the Town Hall of Paris.  This would become the first Hotel de Ville, although it was not completed until 1628. The King appointed two architects, Dominique de Cortone, and Pierre Chambiges, to create a city hall befitting of the city of Paris. It was built in the Renaissance style, and replaced the previous ‘House with the Pillars’, which was torn down.  

King Francis’ new town hall would survive until it was destroyed by fire, during the Paris Commune in 1871. Shortly afterwards it would play a part in the French Revolution, when revolutionaries, after successfully storming the city’s prison, the Bastille, captured its governor, Barnard Rene Jourdan, the Marquis de Launay, and took him to the Hotel de Ville where a mob assaulted him. After stabbing him repeatedly with bayonets and shooting him, they severed his head and placed it on a pike. Their next target was Jacques de Flesselles, who was a merchant thought to possess royal sympathies. When he was called to the Hotel de Ville, he was shot by an assassin as he attempted to justify his actions.  Having been mortally wounded, he died on the steps of the building, and within minutes his head was also on a pike. 

It was not unusual for death to occur outside the Hotel de Ville, this was after all the city hall, and it had been a place of execution since the Middle Ages. Today this square is an open and cheerful space in the city, but Place de Greve, just outside the Hotel de Ville, had been known for its public executions since at least the 13th Century. It was here that men were beheaded, hung, drawn and quartered, and later executed by the guillotine. It was also here that the burning of 12,000 copies of the Talmud, the Jewish sacred text, took place on the order of King Louis IX. Suspected witches were burned at the stake here in the late 17th Century, and the site had traditionally contained a pillory. While today the square is peaceful, even beautiful, its past should not be forgotten. 

After the fire of 1871, Hotel de Ville was commissioned to be rebuilt, as there was so much damage to the stone work from the fire, it was thought impossible to save the structure. The exterior was to look the same as the renaissance construction, but the interior would be completely different. Hotel de Ville was, and is, the official office of the Mayor of Paris, and houses the local government. The building was also used as a place for new ideas, and housed a hydraulic elevator, and electric ladder, as well as the newly invented telephone.  It is one of the largest city halls in Europe.