The Place De Grève
Later it was used as a public meeting-place and also as a location where unemployed people gathered to seek work. This circumstance accounts for the current French expressions, être en grève (to be on strike) and faire (la) grève (to go on strike).
However, the principal reason why the Place de Grève is remembered is that it was the site of most of the public executions in early Paris. The gallows and the pillory stood there.
The highest-profile executions took place on the grève, including the gruesome deaths of the assassins François Ravaillac, and Robert–François Damiens, as well as the bandit-rebel Guy Éder de La Fontenelle. In 1310 the Place de Grève was also the site of the execution of the beguine heretic Marguerite Porete. In the words of Victor Hugo (in The Hunchback of Notre Dame), the grève was "the symbol of medieval and ancien régime justice: brutal, corrupt, and inadequate."
In 1243 Louis IX of France ordered 24 cartloads of Talmud manuscripts to burned at the square.
Read more about this topic: Place De L'Hôtel-de-Ville
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