The Place de Grève was, before 1803, the name of the plaza now the City Hall Plaza (place de l'Hôtel de Ville) in Paris, France. The city hall lit up to promote the Paris 2012 Olympic bid. ... The Eiffel Tower has become a symbol of Paris throughout the world. ...

It used to be a meeting place, and also the location where unemployed people sought prospective employers; this probably resulted in the current French idioms of être en grève (to be on strike).

Nevertheless, the reason why the place de Grève is mostly remembered is that it was the site of most executions in Paris. The gallows and the pillory stood there. These gallows in Tombstone Courthouse State Historic Park are maintained by Arizona State Parks. ... View of the Pillory in the Market-place of Paris in the Sixteenth Century, after a Drawing by an unknown Artist of 1670. ...

The highest-profile executions took place in the Grève, including the gruesome deaths of the regicides Jacques Clément, François Ravaillac, and Robert–François Damiens. In the words of Victor Hugo (the Hunchback of Notre Dame), the grève was the symbol of medieval and ancien régime justice: brutal, corrupt and inadequate. The broad definition of Regicide is the deliberate killing of a king, or the person responsible for it. ... Jacques Clément (1567 - August 1, 1589) was the murderer of the French king Henry III. He was born at Serbonnes, in todays Yonne département, in Burgundy, and became a Dominican friar. ... François Ravaillac François Ravaillac (1578 – May 27, 1610) was the killer of Henry IV of France. ... Robert-François Damiens (1715-1757) was a Frenchman who attained notoriety by unsuccessfully attempting the assassination of Louis XV of France in 1757. ... Victor Hugo Victor Hugo (February 26, 1802 – May 22, 1885) was a French author, the most important of the Romantic authors in the French language. ... The Hunchback of Notre Dame (in French, Notre-Dame de Paris) was a novel first published in 1831 by the French literary giant Victor Hugo. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... Ancien Régime means Old Rule or Old Order in French; in English, the term refers primarily to the social and political system established in France under the Valois and Bourbon dynasties. ...