Place du Trocadero

The Place du Trocadero bears a name with surprising martial origins. It honors an eighteen twenty-three battle in Spain where French forces captured a fortified island called the Trocadero to restore the Spanish king to his throne. Paris chose to commemorate this military victory by naming this high plateau after the Spanish fort. While the square is officially named to include the eleventh of November, marking the armistice of the First World War, the name of that distant Spanish battlefield remains the one that stuck in everyday speech.