Place des Vosges

Today we went to Place des Vosges to visit Victor Hugo's museum, which is located in one of the apartments of this square.

Place des Vosges is a stunning Middle Ages square in "Le Marais", Paris, that measures 140 x 140 meters . It was originally know as "la Place Royale" and it was King Henri IV who commissioned its construction in the sixteen hundreds.

Back in time, Knights tournaments were organized here. Today Parisians enjoy the grassy patches and kids play football around.

I sketched one of the main pavilions (of the Queen or the King, I don't know...) which rises above the main skyline of the square and connects this space to a street through an arched gate.

Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, Paris

This is one of the most popular streets in "Le Marais", one of the nicer neighborhoods in Paris.

"Le Marais" means the Swamp, just because it used to be one (in the Roman era). There are some buildings from the Middle Ages and I drew one of these.

You can see that the old buildings are distorted because of the swampy terrain. 

Le Corbusier  had a plan to destroy this place and replace it with "hygienic" buildings : the infamous "Plan Voisin".  This plan would have been a complete disaster for the city, and buildings like this would be thing of the past.

Just check the plan here