Place de la Republique

Place de la République

Monument at the centre of the Place de la République
Length	283 m (928 ft)
Width	119 m (390 ft)
Arrondissement	3rd, 10th, 11th
Quarter	Arts-et-Métiers Enfants-Rouges Porte-Saint-Martin Folie-Méricourt
From	Boulevard du Temple
To	Boulevard Saint-Martin
Construction
Denomination	7 May 1879

The Place de la République (formerly known as the Place du Château d'Eau) is a square in Paris, located on the border between the 3rd, 10th and 11th arrondissements. The square has an area of 3.4 ha (8.4 acres). It is named after the French Republic and was called the Place du Château-d'Eau until 1879. The Métro station of République lies beneath the square.

The square was originally called the Place du Château d'Eau, named after a huge fountain designed by Pierre-Simon Girard and built on the site in 1811. Émile de La Bédollière wrote that the water came from la Villette and that the fountain was "superb" in character. In 1867, Gabriel Davioud built a more impressive fountain in the square, which (like the first fountain) was decorated with lions. The square took its current shape as part of Baron Hausmann's vast renovation of Paris. Haussmann also built new barracks on the cities, to garrison troops useful in times of civil unrest.

At the center of the Place de la République is a 31 feet (9.4 m) bronze statue of Marianne, the personification of the French Republican, "holding aloft an olive branch in her right hand and resting her left on a tablet engraved with Droits de l'homme." The statue sits atop a monument which is 75 feet (23 m) high. Marianne is surrounded with three statues personifying liberty, equality, and fraternity, the values of the French Republic. These statues also evoke the three medieval theological virtues. Also at the base is a lion guarding a depiction of a ballot box. The monument has been described as "an ordinary one, acceptable to a committee in the 1880s and inoffensively unarresting today."