This majestic square at the foot of the Champs-Élysées was originally consecrated to the glory of Louis XV, but there was no peace or concord in its early years. Laid out in the 1770s, it was first called place Louis-XV; unlike traditional squares such as the place Royale, it was not fully hemmed in by buildings. But the great open space became a theater of punishment, as it was here that crowds watched as Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, like more than 2,000 others between 1793 and 1795, were guillotined. And it was here that Madame Roland cried, "Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!" When the blood of the victims had been washed away and the yells of the sans culottes extremists had died down, the square was renamed Concorde. In place of a statue of Louis XV, a politically neutral monument was put up in 1833: a 107-foot obelisk originally quarried in the 8th century BC and a present from the viceroy of Egypt (its gilded cap was restored in 1998). The square continues to have politically symbolic weight. Demonstrations gather here, as the Assemblée Nationale is right across the river and the Palais de l'Élysée (the French presidential palace) and the U.S. Embassy are just around the corner. Among the handsome 18th-century buildings facing the square is the Hôtel Crillon, originally built by Gabriel -- architect of the Petit Trianon -- as an 18th-century home for three of France's wealthiest families. Métro: Concorde.