Royal SquarePlace Royale

Royal Square is Caen’s formal civic stage, planned to give the city a geometry of power and ceremony. At its center stands Louis-Messidor-Lebon Petitot’s bronze statue of Louis XIV, cast in 1828 during the Bourbon Restoration, showing the Sun King in Roman guise and turning urban space into political image. Renamed Republic Square, it still holds the tension between monarchy, memory, and everyday public life.