The Place de la Concorde, projected by A.-J. Gabriel (1692-1782) at the end of the Baroque Age, continued to lack, even after a half century and more, appropriate monuments to terminate the cross axis. The building of a big church at the head of the Rue Royale to close the vista between Gabriel’s two colonnaded ranges on the north side of the square had bogged down well before the Revolution; across the river the much earlier Palais Bourbon, set at an angle, was even more awkward than before, now that the roof of the Salle des Cinq Cents rose above it. Since the amelioration of this southern terminal required only a tall masking façade set at right angles to the axis, this was promptly provided. Poyet in 1806-8 used the most obvious Romantic Classical solution for such a problem, a high blank wall with a ten-columned temple portico at its centre. The result is certainly an urbanistic success, if without any particular intrinsic interest; the raising of the portico above a high range of steps ensured, for example, its visibility from the square across the bridge. The form of the pediment was slightly modified and the sculpture by Cortot added in 1837-41. In 1761 Pierre Contant d’Ivry (1698-1777) and, after his death, G.-M. Couture (1732-99) had made successive projects for a church dedicated to the Magdalen at the head of the Rue Royale, the latter already proposing that it be surrounded by a Classical peristyle. This structure, which was as yet barely begun, Napoleon now decided should be not a church but a Temple de la Gloire—he reversed his decision in 1813 after the Battle of Leipzig and the loss of Spain. For such a temple he understandably preferred, in the competition held in 1806, neither the first nor the second premiated design, both of church-like character, but one by Pierre Vignon (1763-1828) that proposed the erection of an enormous Corinthian temple on a high Roman podium. Inside, a series of square bays covered with domes on pendentives supported by giant Corinthian columns provided a structural solution technically Byzantine but as imperially Roman in scale and detailing as the exterior. Construction of the Madeleine, begun in 1807, dragged on interminably. J.-J.-M. Huvé (1783-1852) succeeded Vignon as architect in 1828 and, like the Arc de l’Étoile, the edifice was finally finished only under Louis Philippe in 1845. The interior has a somewhat funereal solemnity, more characteristic of the post-Napoleonic regimes than of the period of its initiation. The rather obvious temple form of the exterior is redeemed by the superb siting, the really grand scale, and the rich pedimental sculpture by Lemaire. Like Chalgrin’s arch, Vignon’s Madeleine has continued to provide a major monumental nexus in the urbanism of Paris ever since.