What happened to the place de la Concorde?

Answer 1

Place de la Concorde is the site of the Bastille prison which was stormed by the revolutionaries on 14th July,1789.The obelisk which now stands there was originally from Egypt and 'stolen' by the French when they controlled Northern Africa in the 19th century.

Answer 2

Nothing happened to the Place de la Concorde. It was still there when I looked last week. I have already given this answer once, but somebody changed it for an answer saying that 1199 people were guillotined there during the revolution. This is a) not an answer to the question (which wasn't what happened IN the Place de la Concorde) and b) completely wrong, since the Place de la Concorde was only named AFTER the revolution, and only built in its present form much later than that. Since then, lots of things have happened IN the Place de la Concorde, but nothing has happened TO it.

Want a full answer to the original question? OK:

This great square was originally designed by Gabriel to be a present from the people of Paris to King Louis XV, at that time known as Louis the Well-Beloved. He created a 21-acre octagon surrounded by a dry moat, with a statue of the King in the centre. At intervals around the moat were statues representing the chief towns of France, and the centre of the square was reached by four bridges. Amusingly, the squatters of Paris soon discovered that the pedestals of the statues were hollow, and they moved in, hanging out washing and growing vegetables in the moat. In 1770, however, the crowd in the square panicked during a firework display held to celebrate the wedding of the King's son. 133 people were crushed to death in the moat, which had to be filled in.
During the Reign of Terror the Square's name was changed from Place Louis XV to Place de la Révolution, and 1,343 people were guillotined there, starting with Louis XVI. After that, the square was given its present name (Concord means Peace and Harmony), and the bridge across the river was built with stones taken from the demolished Bastille. In the reign of Louis-Philippe the square was completed by an architect named Hittorff, who added the fountains and brought from the ruined palace of Marly the statues at the entrances of the Tuileries gardens ('Winged Horses' by Coustou) and the Champs-Élysées ('Horse-tamers' by Coysevox). The Obelisk in the centre of the square was a gift to the people of France from Mohammed Ali, Pasha of Egypt. It is 3,300 years old and weighs 2,200 tons. Around the base of the obelisk, which came from the Temple of Luxor, are carvings representing the machines used to bring it to Paris and set it up (Cleopatra's needle, you may remember, was both broken and lost at sea on its way to London, so the French engineers had something to crow about).

EDIT:
- 1,119 people were beheaded there (and not 1,343). - the guillotine was first set there (temporarily) in October 1792. The King Louis, guillotined on the 21 of January 1793, wasn't the first one beheaded there.

Answer 3

It was the location selected for the public executions by guillotine and was given the name of Place de la Revolution.