History of the Trocadéro

The square owes its name to the Battle of Trocadero, on August 31, 1823. On that day, French forces captured Fort Louis, known as Trocadero, held by the Spanish liberals defending Cadiz. Laid out in 1869 under the name Place du Roi-de-Rome, it was renamed in 1877 in memory of that battle.

Its full name, Place du Trocadéro-et-du-11-Novembre, adds the mention of 11-Novembre in reference to the armistice of November 11, 1918, which ended the First World War. Today, the semicircular square, about 164 meters across, is adorned at its center with an equestrian statue of Marshal Foch, a work by the sculptor Robert Wlérick unveiled in 1951.

The first great building on the hill of Chaillot was the Palais du Trocadéro, built from 1876 to 1878 for the 1878 World's Fair. It was the work of the architects Gabriel Davioud and Jules Bourdais, in an eclectic style with Moorish and neo-Byzantine influences, inspired by the Giralda of Seville and the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.

It was organized around a central rotunda housing a concert hall with about 4,600 seats, flanked by two towers of about 80 meters topped with gilded domes, and extended by two curved wings, the Passy wing and the Paris wing. A cascade flowed down from the palace toward the gardens, in the direction of the Seine.

The Palais du Trocadéro was demolished in 1935 to clear the site and build a new edifice worthy of the International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques in Modern Life, planned for 1937. And so, from 1935 to 1937, the Palais de Chaillot took shape, designed by the architects Léon Azéma, Jacques Carlu and Louis-Hippolyte Boileau in a neoclassical Art Deco style.

Reprising the principle of the two curved wings, the Passy wing and the Paris wing, the palace this time opens onto a vast, clear central esplanade, freeing the perspective onto the Eiffel Tower. It houses today the Musée de l'Homme, the Musée national de la Marine, the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine, and the Théâtre national de Chaillot.

The esplanade that opens between the two wings of the Palais de Chaillot bears the name Parvis des Droits de l'Homme (Esplanade of Human Rights). President François Mitterrand gave it this name on May 30, 1985, in memory of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948, in the palace's theater by the General Assembly of the United Nations.

It is from this raised esplanade, above the gardens and the fountains, that Paris offers its most photographed view of the Eiffel Tower. The square and its esplanade remain freely accessible, at any hour.