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Origin and history

Place Royale de Reims, located in the city centre, is a major 18th century urban project. It is part of the grip of the ancient Roman forum of Durocorturum, taking over the cardinal axes of Cardo and Decumanus. Originally, the district, called Grand Credo, was a maze of narrow and unhealthy alleyways, mostly belonging to the chapter of Notre Dame. The initiative of his transformation came from the lieutenant of the inhabitants Louis-Jean Levesque de Pouilly, who proposed in 1746 his drilling to facilitate the royal passage, after Queen Marie Leszczyńska had encountered difficulties in crossing the city by coach.

The project was approved by the King's Council in 1755, providing for a place of 28 toises by 40, partly financed by the crown. Despite oppositions, including the archbishop and the chapter of Notre-Dame, work began in 1758 under the direction of architect Jean-Gabriel Legendre and Trudaine, director of the Ponts et Chaussées. The square was designed as a strategic crossroads between the royal roads, linking Paris to the borders of Champagne and Flanders to Burgundy. Its initial completion in 1760 cost £620,000, but work continued until 1788 for the western part.

In the centre, a monument dedicated to Louis XV, carved by Pigalle, was inaugurated in 1765. The royal statue, destroyed during the Revolution in 1792, was replaced in 1818 by a bronze of Pierre Cartellier representing the king as Roman emperor, reusing marbles intended for another monument. The facades bordering the square, ordered architecture, were partially preserved after the destruction of the First World War, although their upper parts were altered by elevations. The square, which was classified as a historic monument in 1952, also housed the hotel des Fermes, now sub-prefecture.

Place Royale was a place of social and economic life: flower market at the beginning of the 20th century, a gathering point for the day labourers nicknamed "the Louis XV" with reference to the homeless sitting on the steps of the monument after the withdrawal of its grid around 1910. It also served as a reference for the numbering of the streets of Reims in 1842. Despite recurring debates on the replacement of the statue of Louis XV (proposals for Colbert in 1885, 1894, 1900 and 1902), it now retains its architectural unity and symbolic role in the urban history of Reims.

The destruction of the First World War spared the facades, but their interior was rebuilt. The Société Générale completed architectural unification in 1910 with the construction of the last building in the southwest. Since then, the square, once again paved and forbidden to parking, has regained an aesthetic close to its original state, mixing ancient heritage, 18th century royal ambition and revolutionary memory.

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