Place de l'Estrapade

Place de l'Estrapade takes its name from a brutal method of torture once used on this site. Soldiers and criminals were hoisted by their hands, tied behind their backs, and dropped repeatedly from a rope until their shoulders dislocated. The French army used this square for such punishments until the late seventeen hundreds. Today, the space is a quiet, leafy neighborhood intersection, marked by its distinctive triangular shape and a stone fountain that sits where the executioners’ apparatus once stood.