Created in 1772, Place de la Concorde sits on what was once a dry moat and fields surrounding the Jardin des Tuileries and the former royal palace, Le Louvre. It’s famously where Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were guillotined in 1793 during the French Revolution, along with many others, gaining the square the name place de la Révolution.
It was renamed place de la Concorde in 1795 and redesigned between 1836 and 1846 to add the two fountains, Fontaine des Mers and Fontaine des Fleuves, and the statues representing various French cities which sit around the edge of the square. But its most famous monument is the 3300-year-old Egyptian Luxor Obelisk, erected in 1836 after France received it as a gift from the King of Egypt and capped with a gilded gold pyramidion, gifted by the President of Egypt in 1998.
