The Place Dauphine, named for the Dauphin…

The Place Dauphine, named for the Dauphin of France, the future Louis XIII, is laid out in 1609 on the site of three riverine islets near the western end of the Île de la Cité, scarcely more than mudbanks at this time.

Among the earliest city-planning projects of Henry IV, the space, a rectangle with two canted ends, is made over to Achille du Harlay to construct thirty-two houses of regular plan.

It is approached through a kind of gateway centered on the "downstream" end, formed by paired pavilions facing the equestrian statue of Henry IV on the far side of the Pont Neuf.

They are built of brick with limestone quoins supported on arcaded stone ground floors and capped by steep slate roofs with dormers, very like the contemporaneous facades of of the soon to be completed Place Royal (soon to become better known as the Place des Vosges), on which construction had begun in 1605.

From the "square", actually triangular in shape, one can access the middle of the ancient bridge called the Pont Neuf.