Monuments and Sculpture
The main monument in the redeveloped square is the 23m tall Paternoster Square Column. It is a Corinthian column of Portland stone topped by a gold leaf covered flaming copper urn, which is illuminated by fibre-optic lighting at night. The column was designed by the architects Whitfield Partners and also serves as a ventilation shaft for a service road that runs beneath the square. It is sometimes referred to as the 'pineapple'.
At the north end of the square is the bronze Shepherd and Sheep by Dame Elisabeth Frink. The statue was commissioned for the previous Paternoster Square complex in 1975 and was replaced on a new plinth following the redevelopment.
Temple Bar, a Wren designed stone archway that once stood on Fleet Street to mark the westernmost extent of the City's influence, was rebuilt at the cathedral side entrance to the square in 2004. The £3million cost of relocating the arch from its then location in Theobalds Park and subsequent restoration was met by the Corporation of London with donations from the Temple Bar Trust and several City Livery Companies.
Read more about this topic: Paternoster Square
Famous quotes containing the words monuments and/or sculpture:
“If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think the Apollo and the Jove impossible in flesh and blood. Every trait the artist recorded in stone, he had seen in life, and better than his copy.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)