square Édouard-Vaillant

The square Édouard-Vaillant occupies the site of an old tollgate, the Barrière de Romainville, which once marked the edge of Paris. In the eighteen sixties, the city government transformed the area into a public park to serve the workers of the growing twentieth arrondissement. Édouard Vaillant, a socialist politician who fought for the rights of the city's poor during the Commune, gave the square its name. He spent his final years here, regularly sitting on these benches to watch the neighborhood children play.