3-043-857 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Ruins of Paris: the Hôtel de Ville, 1871. 'The Hôtel de Ville was a magnificent structure, dating in part from 1628. The additions of 1842 to this municipal palace cost £640,000, and some of the saloons were the most gorgeous in Paris, perhaps in the world. Here, in the days gone by, the Prefect of the Seine was wont to entertain his 7000 guests in the great gallery, with its gilt Corinthian columns and 3000 wax-lights - the whole suite of rooms comprising six or seven grand saloons. In and about the building were five hundred statues and busts of French celebrities...As a specimen of magnificence in the modern French taste, the furniture and decorations of the Hôtel de Ville were unrivalled. Here have been enacted many famous and infamous scenes in the history of Paris. Here the first Commune held its bloody sittings; here Robespierre took refuge with his partisans, and was found by the soldiers with his broken jaw, when he had shot himself in despair; the Citizen King, Louis Philippe, was presented here to the people by Lafayette, from a central window; here the soldiers were quartered in 1848; and here in 1871 was the stronghold of the last Commune, as fanatical and destructive as the first'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.