This square's former name, Place de Grève (strike), gave rise the expression «to strike» (faire grève): unemployed workers in fact had the custom of meeting there in the Middle Ages. A place for executions under the Ancien Régime with different procedures (depending on your status or the nature of your crime you were hung, beheaded, put on the wheel, burnt or drawn and quartered), today it is covered with granite slabs and a door in the middle, the side aisle of Paris.