Monument to Gérard de Nerval translated from Wikipedia
 General view of the square. |
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| Country | la France |
|---|---|
| town | 4th arrondissement of Paris |
| District | Saint-Merri |
| Area | 0.6016 ha |
| Creation | 1836 |
| Botanical species | Morus alba , Broussonetia papyrifera |
The square of the Saint-Jacques tower is a green space located in the Saint-Merri district of the 4th arrondissement of Paris. Opened in 1836, it extends on a rectangle bordered on the north by the street of Rivoli (of which it is the official address in n 39), on the south by the avenue Victoria, to the west by boulevard de Sébastopol, and east by rue Saint-Martin.
History
After the destruction of the church Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, stood at the foot of the old steeple market Saint-Jacques. The tower was accessible from the market and from the rue du Petit-Crucifix, which ran along it to the west.
Created in 1856 after the acquisition of the land by the city of Paris in 1836, it is the first Parisian square landscaped and built by Jean-Charles Alphand, as part of the major Haussmanian development improvements being hygiene and traffic in the center of Paris. The creation of the square required the disappearance of the rue du Petit-Crucifix.
The square is designed around the tower of Saint-Jacques built in the sixteenth century in the flamboyant Gothic style, remodeled for the occasion in the factory by Theodore Ballu. Among the elements of interest, the square houses since 1857 the statue of Blaise Pascal (because of the experiments on the atmospheric pressure that it made in the tower) carried out by Jules Cavelier and since 1955 the Monument to Gérard de Nerval (in memory his suicide by hanging on the Place du Châtelet) composed of a medallion and a stone in which are engraved verses of the poet.
General view with the tower, the statue of Pascal and the monument to Nerval
Plaque commemorating Gérard de Nerval
Plaque with an excerpt from a poem by Gérard de Nerval
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Saint-Jacques tower which gives its name to the square.
On June 7, 1990, one of the trails in the square was renamed to the Waslaw-Nijinski alley in memory of the Russian ballet dancer, who performed at the nearby Châtelet theater in the years 1910-1920.
The Square is restructured in 1997 and then from 2006 to 2009 the square as well as the tower Saint-Jacques are restored. New plantations were made including the white mulberry “Let’s grow here” planted in April 2008 by the municipal authorities in the presence of the first assistant to the mayor, Anne Hidalgo, to support the action of the Association of Education Network without borders. There is another variety of mulberry in the square, the paper mulberry.
The White Mulberry “Let’s Grow Here” from the Education Without Borders Network