Hotel de Ville

 

In the previous post, I explained an annual celebration of heritage that occurs on the third weekend of September, Journees du Patrimoine.  I discussed our visit to the Senat in that post, but said there were many other places we visited as well.  Another stunning building we were able to tour was the Hotel de Ville, or the Paris City Hall.  It is another grand and elaborate structure, but is not particularly old at all.  The original city hall building on that site--adjacent to the Centre Pompidou and just across the river on the Rive Droit from Notre Dame and Sainte-Chapelle--was built around 1350.  In the 16th Century, King Francis I decided that Paris needed a city hall befitting its stature as the largest city in Europe.  A design for a grand building reflecting Renaissance ideals and aesthetics was designed and finally completed about a hundred years later in 1628.  Two centuries later, it served as a setting for many important events in the French Revolution.  Later during the Paris Commune, Communards used the building as their headquarters.  In 1871, as the Commune was on the brink of falling, the French army approached the Hotel de Ville and the Communards set fire to it, destroying it and almost all of the city archives.  

It was then determined shortly thereafter that the Hotel de Ville would be rebuilt as a replica of the one that had stood for centuries before, and the reconstruction took about two decades.  So the current Hotel de Ville dates from close to the turn of the 20th Century.

Since its reconstruction, modern elements have been gradually added.  Since it is a working city hall, systems must be constantly updated, but some aesthetic elements have as well.  The picture above is a detail from one of my favorite parts of the Hotel de Ville, a series of stained glass windows depicting activities in modern Paris.  I am not sure exactly when they were installed, but I think that 1950s is a good guess.  (The artist who designed them, Raphael Lardeur, died in 1967.)

Below are several more images of these windows.  I love the subtle color differences, the geometry of the compositions, and the use of textured glass.  I thought they were really beautiful.