User:Bangiomorpha/Place Verte (Charleroi)

The place Verte, the "Green Square" in french, is one of the largest and most important squares in the lower town of Charleroi (Belgium).It is surrounded on its four sides by buildings and is crossed in the north by the boulevard Joseph Tirou.

Odonymy
The square was successively called Place Verte (1706), Place du Sud (end of the 19th century), and finally Place Albert I. This name was given by the municipality in 1934 to honor the third king of the Belgians.

In 2017, after the reconfiguration, and in order to eliminate the duplication of names in the municipality, the square was given its original name "Place Verte".

History
The Ville-Basse, "lower city", of Charleroi was created in 1675 to defend the wooden bridge with a movable part thrown over the Sambre to allow access to the fortress, the Ville-Haute, "upper city", from the south. At the Ville-Basse, this bridge led to a small area surrounded by water. A final wooden drawbridge had to be crossed to reach the "Place d'Armes de la Basse-Ville" ("place-of-arms fo the lower city"). From this central square, two quays and four radiating streets start. The current streets of Marcinelle, Charles Dupret, Puissant d'Agimont and the rue de Marchienne follow the same route.

A fifth street was originally planned, as shown in a handwritten plan by Vauban. But the construction of the Capuchin convent meant that it was not built. This street, the counterpart of the present rue Charles Dupret, was to be located approximately at the place of the present rue du Collège, which was pierced in 1837 through the former site of the garden of the community that disappeared during the French Revolution. After the capture of the city in 1746 by the Prince of Conti during the War of the Austrian Succession and its return to Austria by Louis XV in 1748, the fortifications were partially dismantled. The reduction disappeared and a standing stone bridge replaced the wooden one. Ferraris' map from the end of the 18th century shows that the square was at that time surrounded by buildings, including on the north side, along the Sambre.

For a long time, the square was only a meadow surrounded by an alley of lime trees, girdled from 1819 by blue stone pillars linked by chains. The trees disappeared little by little. The last ones were cut down in August 1861 and replaced by seventeen candelabras as part of a beautification plan decided on March 2, 1862. The pillars were removed in 1890 and bought back by the municipality of Mont-sur-Marchienne to decorate the town square. The pillars were removed in 1890 and bought back by the commune of Mont-sur-Marchienne to decorate the town square.

A mobile metal bandstand was inaugurated in 1887. It disappeared after the First World War.

After the Second World War, the filling in of the old arm of the Sambre, begun in the early 1930s, was completed and the boulevard Joseph Tirou which replaced it was inaugurated in 1948. The buildings that separated the square from the river were demolished and replaced by the commercial building Nouvelles Galeries in 1953. Except for the construction of new buildings, including the Albert Centre, the area generally retained its general layout for some 40 years.

In the early 1990s, a 150-space parking garage was built underground, doubling the number of spaces available. This work raised the level of the square in relation to the surrounding buildings.

Reconfiguration of the 2010s
Following the construction of the Rive Gauche shopping center, the square is totally reconfigured to meet the needs and requirements of the new context. The proposal of the architectural firm MSA is to design a multifunctional pedestrian space from facade to facade, free of obstacles and cars. Therefore, in order to make this space unitary and legible, a mineral floor covering with a homogeneous light-dark pattern is designed. Part of the traffic is placed in the tunnel under the Boulevard Joseph Tirou, leaving only the City-Bus passage. In the basement, a multi-storey parking lot accessible via a stairwell to the south and the Rive Gauche shopping center to the west are planned.

The square was inaugurated on March 9, 2017 in the presence of the mayor of Charleroi Paul Magnette.

Buildings and monuments
With a few exceptions, most of the buildings that surrounded and still surround the square are banks and shops, cafés or restaurants and other places of entertainment.

In front of the Molière bookstore is a statue of Gaston Lagaffe with his Fiat 509, officially inaugurated on September 17, 2021. Made in partnership with the publishing house Dupuis, it involved the same artist as the Spirou of the Charleroi-Sud station.

Events
In 1760, the Empress Maria Theresa authorized the organization of jeu de paume competitions in the square. This is the ancestor of the pelota or ball game, for which the square was the site of numerous competitions that attracted large crowds in the last quarter of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

For many years, the square has also been the site of a market held on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. This was moved to the Place de la Digue in May 2014 following construction, but it returned to the Place Vert in July 2017.

Since 2017, during the Christmas market, one of the five highlights of the Big five, in addition to the chalets deployed on the Place de la Digue, the Place Verte hosts an ice rink.

Place of the finish of the "10 miles of Charleroi ".