Where does the name Place Bir-Hakeim in Bordeaux come from?

Do the people of Bordeaux really know how much the city owes to Louis-Urbain Aubert, Marquis de Tourny (1690-1760) and Intendant of Guyenne of King Louis XV ? To summarize: a modernized and cleaned city with large streets, squares, squares, numerous gardens, including the Public Garden – trees beloved by Tourny – and, of course, the famous avenues that the green municipality wants to reinvent.

The great 18th century planner had the ambition to make Bordeaux, the second most important city in France at the time after Paris, “the most beautiful city in the kingdom”. In addition to all this, he also wanted to give it “a beautiful facade to impress the visitor” by redeveloping its platforms.

For the grandson of Louis XV

In the middle of this project, the medieval gate of Salinières. It opens on one side to the old moat of the Town Hall, the current Cours Victor Hugo, and on the other to a harbor full of crowds of people and boats unloading their cargoes, these famous salty foods that gave it its name, as at the neighboring quay. Instead, Tourny envisioned a beautiful semicircular esplanade. It will be bordered by uniform houses whose line will then stretch along the Garonne, north to the Cour des Aides, south to the Quai de la Monnaie.

“Burgundy”, “Napoleon”… Habits die hard: some residents of Bordeaux still call it Porte des Salinières

He entrusts them to the architect Angel-Jacques Gabriel the design of the facades and that of a new monumental door, which the architect André Portier will be responsible for the execution. It was completed in 1755. It was the young Duke of Burgundy, the first son of the Dauphin Louis, the eldest son of Louis XV, who gave it its present name and that of the place where it stands. The dedication took place with great fanfare in September 1751. It was then decided to transform the door into a triumphal arch, precisely to celebrate the visit of Napoleon I. The Emperor would come in person in 1808, but the work would not be done. “Burgundy”, “Napoleon”… Habits die hard: some residents of Bordeaux still call it Porte des Salinières.

Bir-Hakeim and the Free French Forces

The place, in turn, will go down the centuries under the name of “Burgundy”. It was only in 1947 that it was renamed “Bir-Hakeim”, to commemorate the famous World War II battle fought in Libya by the Free French forces in 1942.

For sixteen days, from May 27 to June 11, General Koenig's 1st Free French Division bravely resisted, around the well of an oasis in the Libyan desert, the attacks of Afrikakorps, General Rommel's outnumbered troops. The respite thus gained allowed the British, then in a weak position, to retreat, then to achieve the strategic victory of the first battle of El Alameinnext July.

The Porte de Bourgogne has been classified as a historical monument since 1921, and all the buildings on Place Bir-Hakeim are listed. A wise precaution: in 1920, the futurist architect Cyprien Alfred-Duprat would have wiped them off the map to widen and stretch the stone bridge, inaugurated in 1822, and create new paths!