The story of this place
On 21 January 1793 King Louis XVI mounted the scaffold here—then Place de la Révolution—and was guillotined before a silent crowd; the executioner Charles-Henri Sanson displayed his severed head. Nine months later Queen Marie-Antoinette followed on 16 October. During the Terror of 1793–94 roughly 1,300 people died on this spot, including revolutionary leaders Danton and finally Robespierre himself in July 1794. Renamed Place de la Concorde in 1795 as a gesture of reconciliation, the square was later crowned with the 3,300-year-old Luxor Obelisk, gifted by Egypt in 1836. Beneath its fountains and traffic lies France's bloodiest public stage.