Place de la Concorde

The place de la Concorde is one of the most fascinating historical sites for me in Paris. It was the old site of one of the guillotines during the Revolution, where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed. It was perhaps the most notorious guillotine during the Terror. Then, in the mid-19th century, Egypt gave France a 3,000 year old obelisk that had once been at the enterence to the Temple of Luxor. Louis-Philippe erected it as a symbol of state power, or more concretely, the giant phallus of the French nation. It therefore became a symbol of French monarchical power, and furthermore, an emblem of the Second Empire.