It was decided to create a place in front of the old Palais des Ducs, now known as the Logis du Roi, "in order to make the access to it more easy and more beautiful". Two commissioners, Jean Clamonnet and Jean Millot, architects of Dijon, were appointed and those houses, courts or gardens which they judged it necessary to demolish were subjected to compulsory purchase. Martin de Noinville was commissioned to design the place and Jacques Hugot, Ingénieur Ordinaire du Roi, was entrusted with its construction. Noinville designed the great semicircular arcade which we see today ; Hugot ensured that none of the houses behind it exceeded the height of the balustrade.

The Place Royale (Place de la Libération now), as it was called, was completed in 1692.The design was to include an equestrian statue of Louis XIV, which was ordered from Le Hongre, one of the many sculptors engaged on the decoration of the gardens of Versailles. In 1690 the statue was cast in bronze. It weighed 47,000 pounds. Its transport from Paris had never been properly thought out. It got as far as Brosse in the neighbourhood of Auxerre where it stuck in the mud and here it remained for the next twenty-six years. In 1720, five years after the death of Louis XIV, Pierre Morin, an engineer employed in the Ponts et Chaussées, undertook to complete the removal at a cost of 30,000 livres. Twenty yoke of oxen were required for the task. It was not until 1725 that the statue was finally set up in the Place Royale. In 1792, the equestrian figure of Louis XIV which had taken so long to reach its destination was overthrown and the bronze sent to Le Creusot where it was melted down and provided six cannons for the Revolutionary army.