3D Model by Sam Wolson and Trevor Snapp / Photograph by Adrienne Surprenant / MYOP / Redux On October 6, 2026, more than fifty thousand students, parents, and teachers converged on the Place de la République, in central Paris, to protest a lack of staff and resources in French public schools, part of a movement that had begun at a single high school in the suburb of Créteil a few weeks earlier. Soon, other aggrieved groups—farmers, trade unionists, climate activists, yellow-vest protesters angered by rising costs—joined in, and the demonstrations that followed quickly became some of France’s most widespread and explosive since 1968.

On October 17th, a day of fierce confrontations between protesters and police, rioters burned public buildings and looted stores throughout the country. Photos of violent clashes on the Place de la République, where students had draped themselves on a graffiti-covered statue of Marianne, the personification of the French Republic, captured the image of a nation on the brink.

Few Parisian landmarks are more closely tied to a tradition of left-wing mobilization than the Place de la République. In June, 1848, workers erected barricades on a nearby street, only to be brutally suppressed by government forces. (Stunning images of the barricades before and after the battle, using a new technology pioneered by the photographer Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, are among the earliest examples of photojournalism.) In May, 1871, the government crushed yet another worker revolt—the short-lived Paris Commune—on the square itself. The site has become what the French historian Pierre Nora called a lieu de mémoire, a place of memory, where the past resonates with particular intensity and narratives of French national identity are continually renegotiated.

Photograph from Getty The vast rectangular space, which was originally known as the Place du Château d’Eau, took its modern shape in the eighteen-sixties as part of Haussmannization, the urban-reconstruction effort undertaken across Paris by the authoritarian Second Empire. To exert control over the working-class neighborhoods that surrounded the square, Emperor Napoleon III installed military barracks on its north side in the very spot where Daguerre once had his studio. The parliamentary government that followed laid claim to the space, in 1879, by renaming it the Place de la République. The bronze statue of Marianne, by the sculptor Léopold Morice, was added to the center of the square, atop an imposing pedestal, four years later.

On February 9, 1934, the French Communist Party organized a march to the Place de la République as a counter-protest to fascist riots, an action that helped lay the groundwork for the alliance of left-wing parties known as the Popular Front. In the years since, the square has regularly served as the rallying point for trade-union marches, as well as demonstrations in favor of women’s rights and other progressive causes. But, despite these left-wing associations, those with very different visions for France’s future have also tried to claim the space as their own.

The Nazis stationed their troops in Napoleon III’s barracks during their occupation of Paris in the Second World War. In 1958, as France attempted to maintain control of its Algerian colony, the right-leaning General Charles de Gaulle presented a draft of a new constitution, from the base of the Marianne statue. After the attack on the offices of the satirical journal Charlie Hebdo by Islamist militants, in 2015, the square became a gathering place not only for champions of free speech and national unity but for defenders of the secular republic against religious fundamentalism.

In the visual tour of the Place de la République below, viewers will have a chance to step through French history and glimpse moments of protest and conflict through the decades.

The filmmakers and journalists Trevor Snapp and Roopa Gogineni have been working on a documentary about the square for the past several years. A wave of mostly peaceful protests were held there this past weekend, but political battles continue over who or what exactly caused last week’s riots—and over which candidates in next April’s Presidential elections stand to gain from them. “It feels like there is really struggle over what this square is for, and what the French state should be,” Snapp, whose photographs helped make the 3-D model, said.

Many fear that the country is lurching rightward, toward the National Rally candidate Marine Le Pen and her promise of law and order, but, Snapp observed, “April is a long way away.” 1898 At the height of the Dreyfus Affair, as false accusations of treason against a Jewish military officer ignited antisemitic riots across France, a rally was held on the square in support of Max Régis, a vehement antisemite and a polarizing figure of the far right who was running to become mayor of Algiers.

1930s In the years leading up to the Second World War, the Place de la République, pictured on a quiet day here, became an important setting for leftist groups. A 1934 rally led to the creation of the Popular Front. As Hitler consolidated power in Germany and home-grown fascist groups threatened the French Republic, there were annual demonstrations on the square to commemorate working-class resistance to fascism.

August 26, 1944 In one of the final battles before the liberation of Paris, French Resistance forces fought more than a thousand Nazi troops at the Place de la République. General de Gaulle made his triumphant entry into the city later that afternoon, and, the next day, hold-out snipers forced celebrating citizens to take cover behind the statue of Marianne.

September 4, 1958 When France’s ill-fated war to retain control of its Algerian colony threatened to bring down the government, de Gaulle came out of retirement to steer the nation through the crisis. Standing at a giant podium before the Marianne statue, whose base had been covered with ceremonial banners, he made his case for a new constitution, which would become the foundation of France’s current Fifth Republic.

May 24, 1968 The legendary protests of May, 1968, began as a student revolt against the bureaucracy of the French university system, and brought France to the verge of revolution yet again. Hundreds of thousands of striking workers and countercultural militants joined the demonstrations, which were concentrated on the Left Bank but spread across Paris, including to the Place de la République.

March 7, 1982 The day before International Women’s Day, in 1982, twenty thousand women marched on the square, calling for practical reforms, such as workplace equality and free day care, along with an end to patriarchal oppression. A sign draped over Marianne proclaimed, “A la conquête de nos droits”—“Fighting for our rights.”

February 26, 1989 In a year marked by celebrations of the two-hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution, around fifteen hundred Muslims knelt in prayer on the Place de la République as part of a protest against Salman Rushdie’s 1988 novel, “The Satanic Verses.”The author had been accused of blasphemy for his depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.

December 1, 1995 On World AIDS Day, demonstrators from ACT UP Paris congregated on the square to protest the government’s treatment of H.I.V.-positive people. Along with the iconic “Silence = Death” sign, banners proclaimed “SIDA, honte à la France” (“AIDS, shame on France”) and “Lesbiennes, La France vous préfère mortes” (“Lesbians, France prefers you dead”).

July 26, 2014 Several thousand people gathered on the square to protest Israel’s actions during the 2014 Gaza war, despite the fact that French officials had banned the event after Jewish shops and synagogues in Paris were attacked in the preceding weeks. A heavy police presence led to altercations with protesters and approximately fifty arrests.

January 7, 2015 On the day that gunmen allied with Al Qaeda attacked the editorial offices of the satirical journal Charlie Hebdo, killing twelve people, a crowd of thirty-five thousand assembled for a spontaneous vigil on the square, holding signs that read “Je suis Charlie”—“I am Charlie.”Later that week, 1.3 million demonstrated in solidarity with the victims. In the era of smartphones, images of these events proliferated on social media.

April 10, 2016 In the spring of 2016, the Nuit Debout (sometimes translated as “Standing Up at Night”) protests against the government’s proposed labor reforms drew up to thousands of visitors nightly to makeshift encampments on the square; French police eventually evacuated the area. The reforms went into effect despite the protests, which were often compared to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

June 30, 2024 After Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party gained the most votes in the first round of legislative elections in June, 2024, thousands of protesters assembled in the Place de la République to call for a New Popular Front of left-leaning parties, with the hope of preventing the far right from gaining a majority in the legislature.

October 6, 2026 Students raised signs on a warm fall day, at the first large-scale demonstration protesting conditions in French schools. By then, a hundred and ninety students had already been injured as police cracked down on individual blockades at schools. One fifteen-year-old boy had his hand blown off by a police grenade.

A week and a half into the October protests, students were joined by demonstrators angered by the government’s economic policies. A yellow vest proclaiming “2026, La Police Mutile Les Lyceen-nes” (“2026, The Police Mutilate High-Schoolers”) adorned the statue of Marianne. French authorities blamed ultra-left groups and criminal bands for the violence and looting, while far-left figures castigated the government for its inept response.

Today, the Place de la République remains a destination for protesters from around the world. The documentarians Snapp and Gogineni point out that, on any given day, French yellow-vest protesters might occupy one area of the Place and Sudanese refugees another. “It’s serving now as this kind of portal for all these different movements,” Snapp said.

3D Model by Sam Wolson and Trevor Snapp / Photographs from PWB Images / Alamy; Hirarchivum Press / Alamy; by Roger Viollet / Getty; from Gamma-Keystone / Getty; by Jacques Marie / AFP / Getty; Anne-Marie Gourier / AFP / Getty; Olivier Boitet / AP; from Reuters; by Zacharie Scheurer / NurPhoto / Corbis / Getty; Thierry Chesnot / Getty; Aurelien Meunier / Getty; Adnan Farzat / NurPhoto / Getty; Samuel Sotto / SIPA / AP; Gabriel Pacheco / Hans Lucas / AFP / Getty; from ZUMA Press Wire / Reuters