The location of the Place corresponds to the bastion of the gate of the Temple in the wall of Charles V (raised between 1356 and 1383). Decorated in 1811 with a fountain called the Château-d'Eau, designed by Pierre-Simon Girard, it took its current shape under the Second French Empire as part of Baron Hausmann's city renovation scheme. Most of the theatres of boulevard du Temple were demolished for this project.
The 'caserne' de Prince Eugène, a military barracks later named the caserne de la Château d'Eau, then the caserne Vérines, was erected by Degrove on this site, in 1854, to replace the former summer exhibition of Wauxhall and the famous diorama where Daguerre, one of the inventors of the photograph, had given his fifteen-minute demonstrations. Built with the foresight to house 3200 men, it has, since 1947, housed the French Republican Guard.