Place Kléber

[1] The first name of the Place Kléber was Barfüsserplatz ('Square of the Barefoot Nuns' in German) because a Franciscan monastery was standing along the square).

After his assassination in 1800 in Cairo, the body of Jean-Baptiste Kléber, general during the French Revolutionary Wars, born in Strasbourg in 1753, was repatriated to France.

Napoleon, fearing that his tomb would become a symbol to Republicanism, ordered it to stay at the Château d'If, on an island near Marseille.

His heart is in an urn in the caveau of the Governors beneath the altar of the St. John Chapel in Les Invalides, Paris.

Traditionally, a huge fir tree (30 m) coming from the Vosges mountains is erected every year on the south west of the Place Kléber and inhabitants deposited gifts for the poor.