April in Paris – A sunny walk from Tuileries to Les Invalides II

The Place de la Concorde is one of the largest open vehicular and pedestrian plazas in the world. Traffic swirls continuously around a central pedestrian area marked by two large fountains and an ancient Egyptian obelisk, a 3300-year-old artifact from Luxor, donated by the Viceroy of Egypt to France in 1829.

At each corner of the octagonal square is a statue representing a French city: Bordeaux, Brest, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Rouen and Strasbourg. They were installed in 1836 by Jakob Ignaz Hittorff, who redesigned the Place de la Concorde between 1833 and 1846.

That same year a bronze fountain, called 'La fontaine des Mers' was added to the square. A second one, the 'Elevation of the Maritime' fountain or 'La fontaine des Fleuves', was installed in 1839. Both fountains were designed by Hittorff