Dome

Southwest pavilion, representing the French city of Bordeaux, by Jacques Ignace Hittorff; The commission for the Place Louis XV was awarded to the Premier Architecte, Anges-Jacques Gabriel. A preliminary design was approved in 1755; the definitive plan in 1757. Construction of the Place Louis XV continued until the 1770s. Under the direction of Nicolas-Marie Potain, Gabriel’s scheme transformed the muddy Esplanade into a knuckle that reinforced the great east–west axis of the Louvre and the Champs-Elysées, subsequently extended to Neuilly, and linked it with the peripheral boulevards, the Cours de la Reine and, via a bridge built by Perronet in 1786, the Left Bank . The Place Louis XV acted as a catalyst for residential development along the north side of the Champs-Elysées. The Comte de Rambuteau levelled and widened the line of boulevards from the Bastille to the re-named Place de la Concorde (ca. 1840), also redesigned by Hittorff (1829-1854). Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.oxfordartonline.com/ (accessed 7/15/2010)