Rotonde de la Villette, a vestige of Paris fiscal wall
The Rotonde de La Villette is located on Place Stalingrad, between the Canal St-Martin and Canal de l’Ourcq. Place Stalingrad was originally named Rond-Point de la Villette and was developed on the site of the Barrière de la Villette, one of the tollbooths of the Wall of the General Farmers (Mur des Fermiers Généraux).
This fiscal wall, built between 1784 and 1788, was punctuated by gates and tollbooths where merchants coming to sell their goods in Paris had to pay customs duties. The Rotonde de La Villette served as headquarters for the controllers, receivers, guards, and mounted officers responsible for overseeing the flow of goods and controlling the warehouses.
This elegant circular building, designed by the architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, is one of the four monumental gates, or Propylaea, remaining from the Wall of the General Farmers. The Barrière de La Villette, also known as the Barrière Saint-Martin, marked the eastern end of the Grande Chaussée Saint-Martin (now Rue Saint-Martin), the official route taken by foreign sovereigns and dignitaries entering Paris. The unpopular tax wall, along with all but four of its monumental gates, was demolished during the French Revolution.
The Barrière Saint-Martin was then renamed Porte de la Villette, and the Rotonde de la Villette was incorporated as one of the fortified gates into the rampart built by Thiers in the 1840s, and was dismantled after the First World War.
Although it survived the major renovations of Paris undertaken by Baron Haussmann in the mid-19th century, the Rotonde de la Villette was burned down during the Paris Commune in 1871, the civil war that broke out at the end of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.
The Rotonde was restored, yet narrowly escaped demolition in the early 1900s during the construction of Metro Line 2! It was listed as a historical monument on April 24, 1907, and today houses a restaurant.
Directions: 19th district – Place Stalingrad
Metro: Stalingrad on Line 2,5,7 or Jaurès on Line 2,5,7bis
Coordinates: Lat 48.883608 – Long 2.369565
