Vendôme Column - Paris, France - Freestanding Columns on Waymarking.com

Napoleon I originally had a column built here (modelled on Trajan's Column) to celebrate the victory at Austerlitz. It was purportedly made from hundreds of cannon that had been gathered after the battle. That column was torn down after the Bourbon Restoration. In 1874, the column was replaced.
Wikipedia (visit link) adds:

"These plates were designed by the sculptor Pierre-Nolasque Bergeret and executed by a team of sculptors including Jean-Joseph Foucou, Louis-Simon Boizot, François Joseph Bosio, Lorenzo Bartolini, Claude Ramey, François Rude, Corbet, Clodion and Henri-Joseph Ruxthiel. A statue of Napoleon, bare-headed, crowned with laurels and holding a sword in his right hand and a globe surmounted with a statue of Victory (as in Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker) in his left hand, was placed atop the column

In 1816, taking advantage of the Allied occupying force, a mob of men and horses had attached a cable to the neck of the statue of Napoleon atop the column, but it had refused to budge - one woman quipped "If the Emperor is as solid on his throne as this statue is on its column, he's nowhere near descending the throne". After the Bourbon Restoration the statue was pulled down and melted down to provide the bronze for the recast equestrian statue of Henry IV on the Pont Neuf (as was bronze from sculptures on the Column of the Grande Armée at Boulogne-sur-Mer), though the statuette of Victory is still to be seen in the salon Napoléon of the Hôtel des Monnaies (which also contains a model of the column and a likeness of Napoleon's face copied from his death mask). A replacement statue of Napoléon, however, was erected by Louis-Philippe in modern dress (a tricorn hat, boots and a redingote), and a better, more augustly classicizing one by Louis-Napoléon (later Napoléon III)."

Documentation (website): [Web Link] Type of Column: Other Location: Place Vendome, Paris, France

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