The Monument
The church was never to be re-built and the Grand' Place of Lille is still one of the few local central places without either a church or a belfry (unlike similar cities such as Bruges and Brussels).
Hyacinthe Jadin composed his Marche du siège de Lille in 1792, in the direct aftermath of the siege. For many years there was, however, no physical monument in the city itself. Some fifty years later, the local authorities became aware that nothing had been made to commemorate the 50th birthday of this event. They decided on the building of a memorial, just in time to lay the first stone in September 1842, but it was not before 1845 that the memorial was finished.
The memorial consists of a column topped by a statue. The column was designed by the architect Charles Benvignat, while the statue was sculpted by Théophile Bra as an allegory of the besieged city wearing a mural crown. It was nicknamed the Goddess by the inhabitants of Lille soon after the erection of the memorial, as some local poems suggest.
Coordinates: 50°38′13″N 3°3′48″E / 50.63694°N 3.06333°E / 50.63694; 3.06333
Read more about this topic: Column Of The Goddess
Famous quotes containing the word monument:
“It is remarkable that the dead lie everywhere under stones.... Why should the monument be so much more enduring than the fame which it is designed to perpetuate,—a stone to a bone? “Here lies,”M”Here lies”;Mwhy do they not sometimes write, There rises? Is it a monument to the body only that is intended?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have given themselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)