Square du Temple

The Square du Temple is a garden square in Paris, France in the 3rd arrondissement, established in 1857. It is one of 24 city squares planned and created by Georges-Eugène Haussmann and Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand. The Square occupies the site of a medieval fortress in Paris, built by the Knights Templar. Parts of the fortress were later used as a prison during the French Revolution, and then demolished by the mid-19th century.

The order of the Knights Templar began in the 12th century, first constructing a fort (Vieux Temple or Old Temple) in Le Marais. In the 13th century, a new fortress was built as their European headquarters. The enclosure, called enclos du Temple, originally featured a number of buildings important to the running of the order, and included a church and a massive turreted keep known as Grosse Tour (great tower), which housed a number of the order's prized possessions, and a smaller tower called Tour de César (Caesar's Tower).

The location of the towers is drawn on the ground in front of the Mairie de Paris Centre (town hall), on the rue Eugène Spuller [fr]. The heavy doors of the Grosse Tour still exist and are kept at Château de Vincennes, whose great keep, attributed to Raymond du Temple [fr] of Notre-Dame cathedral, is thought to have been inspired by the nearby Templar fortress.^{[clarification needed]}

It was here in the enclos du Temple on the morning of Friday, the 13th of October, 1307 that agents of Philip IV of France arrested Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay charging him with heresy. Philip was deep in debt to the Templars due mainly to the 1294–1303 Gascon War with Edward I of England. Philip acted with the approval of Pope Clement V who also desired the dissolution of the Knights Templar. Clement V had annulled the papal bull Unam Sanctam proclaiming papal supremacy over secular rulers, giving Philip legal authority to arrest the Templars. Philip confiscated the immense wealth of the French Templars. Jacques de Molay was burned at the stake for heresy without trial on March 18, 1314, where the Square du Vert-Galant stands in Paris today.

The Temple is also known for having been the place where the French royal family was jailed at the time of the French Revolution. Members of the royal family imprisoned at the Temple's tower were:

By 1808, the Temple had become a place of pilgrimage for royalists, so Napoleon ordered its demolition, which took two years. Remnants were demolished around 1860 under orders from Napoleon III.

Today its location is a station of the Paris Metro, serving the carreau du temple (covered market) and the Palais de Justice (Courthouse) of the third arrondissement.

The garden includes a gazebo, a playground for children, lawns with the largest open to the public from 15 April to 15 October, fountains and a pond with an artificial waterfall, built from rocks brought in from the forest of Fontainebleau. The grid surrounding the square was designed by the architect Gabriel Davioud. The square contains almost 200 varieties of plants, including many exotic species, such as hazel, a Ginkgo biloba, a Honey locust of America, a Pterocarya fraxinifolia, goldenrain tree, Cedrela, and Chinese quince.