Place des Vosges

Inaugurated in 1612 as place Royale, Place des Vosges is an ensemble of three dozen symmetrical houses with ground-floor arcades, steep slate roofs and large dormer windows arranged around a large square. Only the earliest houses were built of brick; to save time and money, the rest were given timber frames and faced with plaster, which was then painted to resemble brick.

The author Victor Hugo lived at the square’s Hôtel de Rohan-Guéménée from 1832 to 1848, moving here a year after the publication of Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame). His former house, the Maison de Victor Hugo, is now a municipal museum devoted to the life and times of the celebrated novelist and poet, with an impressive collection of his own drawings and portraits.