The obelisk standing at the center of the Place de la Concorde is 3,300 years old. It was already ancient before Paris existed.
Pharaoh Ramses II had it carved in the 13th century BC and placed at the entrance of the Luxor Temple in what is now southern Egypt. There were two of them. They stood at the temple gates for over 3,000 years until France decided it wanted one.
In 1829, Egypt's ruler Muhammad Ali offered one obelisk to France as a diplomatic gift. Moving it was a different problem. A custom flat-bottomed barge called the Louxor was built specifically for the job, its dimensions calculated to clear every bridge over the Seine. The obelisk was laid on its side, loaded onto the barge, and transported across the Mediterranean, up the Atlantic coast, and into Paris via the Seine. It arrived in December 1833. It took until 1836 to raise it into place.
King Louis-Philippe chose the Place de la Concorde deliberately. Just decades earlier, that same square had been the site of the guillotine. More than 1,100 people were executed there during the French Revolution, including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. A 3,300-year-old piece of Egyptian stone from a pharaoh's temple was, in his view, a more neutral presence than any symbol of the French monarchy.
The twin obelisk never moved. It still stands in front of the Luxor Temple today, in the exact position where Ramses II placed it.