Place Denfert-Rochereau, Paris

The Place Denfert-Rochereau (), previously known as the Place d'Enfer, is a public square located in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, France, in the Montparnasse district, at the intersection of the boulevards Raspail, Arago, and Saint-Jacques, and the avenues René Coty, Général Leclerc, and , as well as the streets Froidevaux, Victor-Considérant and de Grancey. It is one of the largest and most important squares on the left bank of the Seine.

The square is named after Pierre Denfert-Rochereau, the French commander who organized the defense at the siege of Belfort during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). It is dominated by the ''Lion of Belfort'' statue (a smaller version of the original in the town of Belfort) by Frédéric Bartholdi.

The square is the location of the Paris Catacombs museum. It is frequently the place where demonstrations and protest marches in Paris either start or end. The square is also the place depicted on the backdrop at the beginning of the third act of ''La Bohème'' by Puccini.

History

This square owes its original official recognition to letters patent dated 9 August 1760, which applied to the part of the site that was located inside the old Wall of the Farmers-General (i.e. the northeastern portion of the present Place Denfert-Rochereau). The Wall of the Farmers-General, built under the ancien régime to prevent the evasion of excise taxes, separated Paris from the suburb of Montrouge. An ordinance of the Bureau of Finances, dated 16 January 1789, recognized the southwestern portion of the square, the part outside the wall, as part of Paris. The opening in the wall itself, which permitted entry or exit from Paris, was commonly called the Barrière d’Enfer. It is mentioned in ''Les Misérables'' by Victor Hugo:

:"How did those children come there? Perhaps they had escaped from some guardhouse which stood ajar; perhaps in the vicinity, at the barrière d'Enfer, or on the esplanade de l'Observatoire, or in the neighboring carrefour, dominated by the pediment on which could be read: ''invenerunt parvulum pannis involutum'' they discovered the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes" there was some mountebank's booth from which they had fled €¦"

Here, astride the opening in the wall, the architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux constructed two tollhouses to be used for the collection of the octroi, a local tariff levied on products entering Paris. At the center of the present square, these two pavilions once framed the opening in the wall, and now, oddly, the entrance to the underworld of the catacombs lies next to the western one of them, the pavilion at the barrière d'Enfer ("barrier of Hell").

Former name

Traditionally called by the rather unattractive name of Place d'Enfer ('Hell Square'), the square had the name of Denfert-Rochereau ascribed to it through a sort of "municipal pun". The Franco-Prussian War had demoralized the French populace, and there was widespread damage all over northeastern France and to Paris itself. Anxious to put a positive spin on the defeat, the French authorities were looking for heroes to glorify. (At this time, for example, the village of Bitche, located near the German border on the Orne

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