Plainpalais is a promenade to the south of the city of Geneva.
A statue of Rousseau stands in the square. During the Geneva Revolution of 1792-1795,
Geneva's syndics were killed in an uprising in Plainpalais. Mary Shelley recounts
this incident in A History of a Six Weeks' Tour, Letter II:
To the south of the town is the promenade of the Genevese, a grassy plain planted
with a few trees, and called Plainpalais. Here a small obelisk is erected to the glory
of Rousseau, and here (such is the mutability of human life) the magistrates, the
successors of those who exiled him from his native country, were shot by the populace
during that revolution, which his writings mainly contributed to mature, and which,
notwithstanding the temporary bloodshed and injustice with which it was polluted,
has produced enduring benefits to mankind, which all the chicanery of statesmen, nor
even the great conspiracy of kings, can entirely render vain. From respect to the
memory of their predecessors, none of the present magistrates ever walk in Plainpalais.