There was one of the royal residences on the northern side of the square before; the Hotel des Tournelles was built in 1388 and bought by the King in 1407. It was a large and beautiful house surrounded by walls with small columns, after which it was named.
During a tournament in 1559, king Henry II was hit unintentionally by a spear thrown by a captain of his guard. After 10 days of much suffering he died in the Hotel des Tournelles and his wife Catherine de Medici hated since then the residence and ordered to destroy it and she lived then in Louvre.
At first there was a large horse market but then the place became the centre of fashionable life, a trade place, for walks and amusements. It is a place for duellists. When Louis XIV went to Versailles, the French aristocracy neglected the area but the nobility stayed faithful to the place.
Place des Vosges has the form of a square delimited by 36 brick (or stone-made covered with a coating imitating bricks) pavilions built on arcades.