Paris, place des Vosges

In December 2002, Walt and I first saw what has been chez nous (our house) for more that 20 years now. In February 2003, our San Francisco house was just going on the market. We didn't know how long it would take to sell it. One of us needed to come back to Saint-Aignan and measure the rooms to see which pieces of furniture we would ship to Saint-Aignan when we moved. I volunteered. I spent a couple of days with friends in Rouen and then drove down to the Loire Valley. I also had business to do with a notaire concerning the purchase. At the end of that short trip, I spent a day or two in Paris. One of the places I went to was the Place des Vosges, which was built for “the good king” Henri IV in the early 1600s.

Here's what the Cadogan guidebook for Paris, published 30 years ago, wrote about it: “In 1605, Henri finally began the building of what would be known as the Place Royale, a centerpiece that the sprawling Marais badly needed. Its architects are unknown; though the square is Italian in concept, the adaptation became something a 17th century Frenchman could love — elegant, hierarchical, and rigorously symmetrical.” Henri IV was assassinated a few years before his Place Royale was completed. In a way, it was the predecessor of the Château de Versailles.