Wall of the Ferme générale


The Wall of the Ferme générale was commissioned by Antoine Lavoisier and built between 1784 and 1791 by the Ferme générale, the corporation of tax farmers. It was one of the several city walls of Paris built between the early Middle Ages and the mid 19th century. It was 24 kilometers long and roughly followed the route now occupied by line 2 and line 6 of the Métro. It crossed the districts of the Place de l'Étoile, Batignolles, Pigalle, Belleville, Nation, the Place d'Italie, Denfert-Rochereau, Montparnasse and the Trocadéro.

History

Unlike earlier walls, the Farmers-General Wall was not intended to defend Paris from invaders but to enforce the payment of a toll on goods entering Paris to the Ferme générale. The wall's tax-collection function made it very unpopular: a play on words of the time went "Le mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant" There was also an epigram:
Architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux designed its 62 toll barriers in a neo-classical or even classical style. The architecture of the buildings, "dens of the Tax Department metamorphosed into palaces with columns" according to Louis-Sébastien Mercier, highlighted the oppression which the wall represented for Parisians. The wall was bordered by a boulevards outside and a chemin de ronde inside, except between the barrière d'Italie and the barrière d’Enfer where Gobelins, Saint-Jacques and d'Enfer replaced the chemin de ronde inside the wall.
In 1787, Loménie de Brienne, Minister for Finance, worried about the very high cost of the construction and considered stopping the work but never actually did so because it was so far advanced.
The toll on goods was abolished on 1 May 1791 in the early stages of the French Revolution, but was restored in 1798 by the French Directory. Public perception of the tolls improved under Napoleon. The majority of the toll barriers were destroyed during the expansion of Paris in 1860. At the same time the octroi that had been collected at the wall was abolished.

Current remains

Some portions of the wall still exist, such as the rotunda of the Barrier of La Villette, the Barrière du Trône, the Barrière d'Enfer, and the rotunda of Parc Monceau. The wall itself was replaced by the route of the following streets: