Place Grangier

It is on the current square that Louis XI chose to build his royal palace, of which only a few remains are exposed in the Archaeological Museum. The palace was dismantled in the 19th century, and a new, more modern district was created, with traffic lanes, but above all sidewalks at the foot of the buildings to allow for safe pedestrian traffic. The Hôtel des Postes, with its classical style and its golden letters P.T.T., stands at the heart of this new district. It is surrounded by art nouveau style buildings, fashionable from the 1910s. Their geometric shapes, and their references to non-European art, are easily recognizable. This is notably the case of the building with the pagoda roof, at the corner of rue du Temple and rue du Château. More modern additions have closed the square, giving it a very 20th century look. Since 2019, a sculpture completes the square: the time counter. The sphere is inlaid with clocks that tell the time in different cities around the world. It is surmounted by a man sitting on the world, which holds a dial masking his face to indicate the local time. Poetic and denunciatory, the work has quickly found its place in this place where time has not stopped.