Porte des Ternes de Paris

The Porte des Ternes sits where the old city wall of Paris once stood, marked today by a wide intersection where the boulevard periphery meets the city grid. In the late nineteenth century, this was a customs barrier, a gateway where merchants paid duties on goods entering the capital. Victor Hugo’s son-in-law, Charles Vacquerie, lived nearby in a house that served as a meeting point for poets and thinkers who found the edge of the city a quiet retreat from the dense center.