Place Broglie

This guide to Place Broglie in Strasbourg turns on one night in April 1792, when the city's mayor, Philippe-Frederic de Dietrich, asked a young army captain lodging in his house, Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, to write a marching song for volunteers heading to war. It follows him working through darkness on verses and a tune before dawn, and traces the square itself back further, to its days as Strasbourg's horse market before Marshal de Broglie lined it with lime trees in 1740.