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Here I am in front of the Hôtel de Ville, where somewhere north of 6000 Parisians, mostly women, gathered on the morning of 5 October 1789. There were a bunch of reasons for this but it was mostly because they were hungry due to shortages of bread. https://twitter.com/bchadwickfrance/status/1310842291569995776
The Hôtel de Ville looked much the same from the outside then as it does now, but the current version is a copy built in 1882 following the burning down of the previous building in the Paris Commune of 1870. The inside was remodelled.
The women broke in and were able to make off with a few weapons, including cannons, which they would then drag to Versailles with their bare hands. They set off around 10 am, under the rain. It's not raining here yet, but it is set to.
They started out along the river, so I'm taking the Voie Georges-Pompidou, an expressway that's been a wonderful public space since 2016. It's very windy. My view isn't exactly the same as the women's: there's one very notable addition to the skyline.
Here I can choose to take this 861m former road tunnel or continue along the riverbank. I took the tunnel on foot once and won't be doing so again.
Bridges! The Pont des Arts, once (in)famous for its burden of "love locks"; the Pont du Carrousel; the Pont Royal, renamed during the Revolution to Pont National; and the Passerelle Léopold Sédar Senghor, one of Paris's newest and one of my favourites.
The Jardin des Tuileries was once the garden of the Tuileries Palace, where, spoiler alert, the king and his family would live from 6 October 1789 having been brought back to Paris.
The Place de la Concorde is the largest plaza in Paris. I dream of seeing it car-free. It was laid out during the reign of Louis XV, and held his name until the Revolution, when it was renamed…Place de la Révolution. It's where, spoiler alert, Louis XVI lost his head in 1793.
The square took its current name in 1795 as a sign of reconciliation. After the Bourbon restoration it retook the name of Louis XV, and even briefly that of Louis XVI, but went back to Concorde after the July Revolution of 1830.
The Champs-Élysées, famously the plus belle avenue du monde. What do you think?
Viewers of Emily in Paris might recognise the Plaza Athénée hotel, on the avenue Montaigne, one of the most exclusive streets in Paris.
The Liberty Flame was gifted to the city in 1989 as a sign of the Franco-American friendship. It's a replica of the flame of the Statue of Liberty, given by France to the US a century earlier. After a certain car crash in the adjacent tunnel in 1997, it found a new meaning.
This corner of the Place de l'Alma is now called the Place Diana. That edification only happened in 2019, after initial opposition from the British royal family. Naturally there's some interesting graffiti here, including conspiracy theories.
It's starting to rain now. I saw a phone mast or something.
Twenty-first century cycling infrastructure?
Viewed from the Pont d'Iéna: Trocadéro and a big pylon
The magnificent Pont de Bir-Hakeim, complete with metro train, with the high-rise buildings of the 1970s Front de Seine development in the background.
I'm in the 16th arrondissement now. By this point the women were outside the city walls. The communes of Passy and Auteuil were among those annexed into Paris in 1860.
The Gare d'Avenue du Président Kennedy opened in 1988, on a branch of RER line C. The line took over disused track that once linked the Champ de Mars to the Petite Ceinture. The bridge is the curved Pont Rouelle, which crosses the splendid Île aux Cygnes.
The road I'm on now is called the Avenue de Versailles. So I guess I'm going the right way.
The Place de la Porte de Saint-Cloud, complete with temporary cycle lanes. And then across the périph I go! I've now left the city of Paris. In the background in the last photo is the Parc des Princes.
Cat
The Pont de Sèvres. The bridge the women crossed was a little upstream from here, crossing the end of the Île Séguin.
On one side of the river stands a major bus station and the terminus of metro line 9. On the other is a disused railway station, set to become a restaurant, and a tram stop on line T2.
The women stopped for lunch in the town of Sèvres, but when they got here the townsfolk must have been expecting them, because everything was closed. The women had to negotiate with the locals for food and drink.
The town has its own coronapistes, albeit not physically segregated, and a shop you where you can presumably buy the latest version of Wendows.
A topical monument, marking key dates in the history of the French Republic
Passing from Chaville into Viroflay, and in so doing passing from the Hauts-de-Seine department into Yvelines. I'm now officially in the outer suburbs of Paris. The rain is making me wish I'd worn my contact lenses.
Looking forward to riding over this viaduct on the journey home
The end is in sight!
The avenue de Paris
I did get a photo of the Château, but then I accidentally deleted it. In fairness the rain had come on a lot heavier! I am now on an RER train, very wet and cold! Very glad that I'll be sleeping in a warm bed this evening and not camped outside the palace keeping vigil.
As the women were arriving at Versailles, the National Guard headed off to join them, led by a reluctant Lafayette.
Next morning, the king was finally convinced that the only way to keep his head was to bring his family to Paris, and tens of thousands of women, Guardsmen and courtiers made the trek back to Paris. I'm glad I don't have to walk this again tomorrow.
The king would never again spend a night at Versailles. He would spend the rest of his rule in the Palais des Tuileries, then after his overthrow live his remaining days in the Tour du Temple. Here's one I made earlier: a shot of the Square du Temple, at the site of this prison.
Louis XVI eventually met his end at the guillotine, in the Place de la Révolution, as I mentioned upthread. But France wouldn't be a stable republic until almost a century later, in 1870.
Fin. Thanks for reading and sharing!
Fin. Thanks for reading and sharing!
