Place des Vosges is highly recommended to visitors and rightfully so. It is a large square just a few blocks from the Bastille Opera (the new one) in the trendy Marais area of Paris.
The square is surrounded on all four sides by matching imposing buildings, generally four floors each, with vaulted galleries on the ground containing art galleries and a few coffee shops. Place des Vosges was the first urban planning project in Paris, developed in the very early 17th century by King Henry IV. It was originally known as the Palace Royale, because that’s what the first building was, although no French king or queen actually lived there.
Louis XIII was married there to celebrate the square’s inauguration in 1612, and Cardinal Richelieu commissioned an equestrian statue to be erected to Louis later in the century. The original statue was torn down and melted by the French Revolutionaries about 250 years later, and a new one was erected about 50 years after that. (Is there a lesson here for New Orleans politicians?)
The most significant attraction at Place des Vosges is Victor Hugo’s apartment, where the beloved father of the French Republic and prolific writer lived for 16 years before he was exiled. Hugo’s apartment is a fine example of a house museum. Rather than attempt to simply recreate his living quarters, the apartment is designed to tell the story of his life from his earliest years to his deathbed.
Some of the rooms do faithfully recreate his Place des Vosges apartment, but others showcase his life in exile in Guernsey, then later at the end of his life back in Paris but living at a different location. The final room in the tour replicates Hugo’s bedroom, including the actual bed in which he died. Ironically, a painting of his long-time mistress, Juliette Drouet, just before she died, hangs in the doorway to the entrance of Hugo’s final bedroom.
The current temporary exhibition on the first floor showcases Hugo’s apparent boundless sexual appetites with a collection of 18th and 19th century art and sculpture that can only be considered pornography by even current standards. In some ways, it is reassuring to see that certain practices are timeless.