History
A first project for a commemorative column, one that would commemorate the Fall of the Bastille, had been envisaged in 1792, and a foundation stone was laid, 14 July 1792; the project never got further than that. The circular basin in which its socle stands was realised during the Empire as part of the Elephant of the Bastille, a fountain with an elephant in its centre. The elephant was completed to designs by Percier and Fontaine in semi-permanent stucco, but the permanent bronze sculpture was never commissioned due to pinched finances in the latter days of the Empire. Its low base has been retained to support the socle of the column.
In the foundation, a columbarium was arranged to receive the remains of 615 victims of the July Revolution. A further 200 victims of the Revolution of 1848 were later interred in the space; the throne of Charles X was symbolically burned in the square, February 1848.
The column was the scene of the last desperate stand of the Communards in 1871.
Read more about this topic: July Column
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)
“The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)