The area is the Hotel de Ville, lying in front of the Paris town Hall, before was called on place de Greve is ominous name familiar to anyone who has read the novels of Dumas.

The name of the square comes from the French word greve, meaning the sandy shore. Here, on the right Bank of the Seine, was the river pier of Paris. But it is not the business scope has glorified this place.

In 1240 king Louis IX ordered to destroy all copies of the Talmud available in the country. On the place de Greve publicly burned 20 carts of ancient manuscripts. And soon it's the turn of people.

Public executions were in the area for more than five centuries, with 1310 1830. Here were permanently installed gallows and the pillory. Commoners were hanged, aristocrats were beheaded, highwaymen the wheel, heretics and witches were burned. Penalty consistently attracted a large number of onlookers – in those days it was a popular pastime. In total, on the place de Greve were subtly deprived of life tens of thousands of people.

By the end of the eighteenth century, the spread of humanism led to a General belief that a less brutal way of death, is the same for all classes. In 1792, a doctor and member of the National Assembly Joseph Gelatin proposed to use the well-known in many countries, the mechanism with heavy falling knife. In France, he soon became known as the guillotine.

April 25, 1792, on the place de Greve was executed on the guillotine simple thief. Soon, however, a terrible device was transported to the Revolution square (now Accord), where he held most of the killings that bloody era.

In 1803 the area was given its current name. It was announced the establishment of the provisional government of the revolution of 1848, proclaimed the French Republic on 4 September 1870 and the Paris Commune of 1871.

Now this is a beautiful and very popular with the Parisians. Since 1982 the area was turned into a pedestrian zone. In winter there is an ice rink, summer special coating fill sand to play beach volleyball.