Barrière d'Enfer


The Barrière d'Enfer is a pair of tollhouses that once served as a gate through the Wall of the Farmers-General at the current location of the Place Denfert-Rochereau.

Origin of name

The name "Barrière d'Enfer" comes from the street "Rue d'Enfer" which leads there after crossing the Rue de Faubourg-Saint Jacques. Some historians think the street was named because it was "a place of debauchery and robbery", while others believe that the name comes from a corruption of the Latin via inferior . According to Michel Roblin, the name may be derived from the nickname en fer given to a door on the Wall of Philip II Augustus.

History

The two neo-classical pavilions that make up the Barrière were built in 1787 by the architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux, both of which exist still. The buildings are decorated by friezes depicting dancers sculpted by Jean Guillaume Moitte. The tollhouses was designed for collecting the octroi, or taxes on goods entering the city.
The main streets originating from the Barrière d'Enfer were the Boulevard d'Enfer, the Rue d'Enfer, and the Boulevard Saint-Jacques.
The third act of the opera La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini portrays Mimi leaving the city via the Barrière d'Enfer to visit a tavern.
The Barrière is also mentioned in Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables:

Description

The Barrière consists of two identical buildings on either side of the Avenue du Colonel-Henri-Rol-Tanguy, which is itself located along the axis of the Avenue Denfert-Rochereau and Avenue du Général-Leclerc.
In commemoration of this, a portion of the Place Denfert-Rochereau between the two buildings was renamed avenue du Colonel-Henri-Rol-Tanguy on the 15th of March 2004, on the sixtieth anniversary of the Liberation of Paris.