This naturally helped the anti-abolitionist cause going into the referendum of 1908. But despite the square’s innocuous appearance, and the fact that it represents one of the centres of democratic civility and public life in modern Paris, it has a remarkably dark history– one that few tourists are aware of as they stop to consult maps or relax around the fountains.Well before the city hall stood here, the enormous square was known as From beheadings to drawing and quartering by horses, hangings and later execution by guillotine, gory killings were routinely carried out on the square– and treated as fascinating spectacles by city dwellers.While it wasn’t the only site in the capital to make a show of unusual and painful deaths as a purported way to deter criminality, the During the 13th century, heretics (anyone not subscribing to Catholicism, essentially) were executed here; King Louis IX Suspected witches were burned at the stake here as late as the 17th century; others were hanged on the gallows.

Upon the French government’s refusal, the Guillotin family changed their own name.The gibbet differs from the guillotine in that a rope must be cut for the blade to descend. 16,549 men and women were executed by the guillotine. (I don’t even want to get into the horrors that ensued with a rounded blade…. The execution was carried out in the courtyard of Baumettes prison in Marseilles, and was officiated by Marcel Chevalier (France’s last executioner).How crazy is it to think that just a little over 40 years ago people were still being executed by decapitation?Perhaps the guillotine was a little ‘too good’ at its job due to the swiftness and efficacy of the blade. The Guillotine was seen as ‘the great equalizer’ as well as the defender of Revolutionary principles.Guillotin worked with Dr. Antoine Louis (French surgeon) and Tobias Schmidt (a German artisan and harpsichord manufacturer) to design the first prototype, and it is actually credited as being Guillotin’s relatives were so embarrassed that their family name was associated with decapitation that they requested for the device’s name to be changed. En fait, on ignore à quand remontent exactement les premières exécutions, sur la place de Grève ! Also known as: Madame la Guillotine, la Dame (the Lady), la Veuve (the Widow), le Rasoir National (the National Razor), and Louisette, the guillotine is synonymous with ‘the Terror’ of the French Revolution, and it continues to both horrify and fascinate us.Some of these facts may surprise you. The last recorded use of the Halifax Gibbet was in 1650. Poor people and peasants who committed crimes, however,  were actually tortured in some of the most horrific ways possible. Retour sur les supplices les plus célèbres ! De la place de Grève à la place de la Révolution. The subsequent trial was gruesome, sensational, and turned into a media circus. In the winter months a sizeable ice-skating rink is set up on the sweeping plaza.In June and July, free concerts and live tennis matches broadcast from Roland-Garros attract  crowds, who gather clutching beer in large plastic cups and bask in the lazy summer mood.Yet it has rather secret, gruesome past involving torture, corporal punishment and executions. Paris - What you need to know before coming to Paris Eve is fascinated by French culture and history. The Nazis even charged the families of those they had imprisoned and beheaded, sending invoices to the families of the deceased.The newspaper ‘Le Petit Parisien’, which was pro-capital punishment, polled their readers about the death penalty. It has been claimed that the Nazis beheaded almost as many victims as during the French Reign of Terror…Hitler ordered the guillotine as a method of execution in the 1930s, and ordered that 20 of the machines be placed in cities across Germany. )As mentioned above, wealthy people were executed in less brutal ways such as hanging. There were numerous reports of facial twitches, eye and lip movements in the severed heads.In the 1950s French doctors Piedelievre and Fournier concluded that death by guillotine was not as instantaneous as previously thought. Before the guillotine became the tool for execution, things were done differently, and much more violently (I know, it’s hard to imagine something more violent than decapitation by falling blade, but it’s true. Instead of the usual silence and solemnity, they were boisterous and quasi-hysterical. The votes were 330 in favour of the death penalty, and 201 against. Du début du XIVe s à 1832, la place de Grève (actuelle place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville), sert de cadre à toutes les exécutions publiques. Le 4 juillet 1653, Louis XIV et Mazarin assistent à un feu d'artifice tiré sur la place de Grève puis un banquet est offert par la municipalité [11]. The crowd wasn’t won over by the ‘modern machine’ and they even booed executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson.People were used to witnessing gruesome acts of horror that made the guillotine a humane way to go. Cinq types de supplices. The head of the victim would fall into a basket at the foot of the device, whereupon the executioner would hold up the head of the victim for the crowd. This is when the accused is tied to the back of a horse, dragged into town, and then his limbs are tied to 4 separate horse carriages. The French Revolution of 1789 brought on a new period of bloody executions.After the Revolutionary government toppled the French monarchy, public executions mostly moved to the Place de la Concorde, where the guillotine– believed to be a far more humane method of capital punishment than the methods detailed above– was installed.From a contemporary standpoint, you have to strain a bit to imagine how the bright, cheerful square– with its old-timey carousel, pop-up ice rinks and public fountains–  harbored centuries of unthinkable torture and human suffering; how it was a place of public unrest and dissent as well as one of celebration and leisure.Yet that legacy arguably says something important about France’s transformation, politically and socially, over hundreds of years.This is a site that exemplifies, in a real sense, the nation’s rocky and uneven progression from absolutist monarchies to tumultuous Revolutionary regimes, through to the current-day Republic.Looking for deals on some of the city’s most popular attractions, or hoping to save time?