Place des Quinconces

The Place des Quinconces is easily identified by its vast, twelve-hectare open esplanade that slopes gently toward the Garonne River, framed by dense rows of trees planted in a staggered pattern known as a quincunx. This immense space was laid out between eighteen eighteen and eighteen twenty-eight on the site of the former Château Trompette. That fortress was originally commissioned by King Charles the Seventh in the fifteenth century to keep the citizens of Bordeaux under royal surveillance, with its cannons famously aimed inward at the city itself to discourage rebellion.