Ancien pavillon d'octroi Nord de la barrière du Trône

The two stone pavilions flanking the Place de la Nation were once part of the Wall of the Farmers-General. This barrier, built in the seventeen eighties to collect taxes on goods entering Paris, stretched across the city with sixty entry gates. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux designed these structures as neoclassical gatehouses. When tax collectors arrived, merchants stopped here to pay duties on wine and grain. During the French Revolution, the tax collectors became targets, and a guillotine stood between these pavilions, claiming over thirteen hundred lives.