Place des Vosges

The Place des Vosges wears a uniform skin of red brick and steep blue slate roofs. King Henry the Fourth ordered this square built in sixteen oh five on the site of a former royal horse market. He wanted a space for aristocrats to live in perfect, identical houses around a central garden. A stray lance killed Henry in a nearby street before he saw it finished, but the symmetry holds. Today, the park’s gravel paths remain the city's quietest retreat from the traffic.