The bronze Thomas Jefferson standing in Place des États-Unis has an appropriately self-deprecating origin story.

When Jefferson arrived in Paris in 1784 to succeed Benjamin Franklin as American minister to France, someone asked if he was Franklin's replacement. "No one could replace him," Jefferson replied. "I am his humble successor." The French loved him for it.

Jefferson spent five years here, and Paris changed him. He studied architecture, attended the theatre, played chess at the Palais Royal, and developed a taste for Bellet wines from Nice that he later shipped home to Monticello. The square itself was once called Place de Bitche, until the American minister diplomatically persuaded the city to rename it.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tour narrated by Jefferson himself traces his Paris years through the streets he walked, connecting his Enlightenment conversations to the documents, buildings and democratic ideas they produced.