The Arago Medallions
In 1994 the Arago Association and the city of Paris commissioned a Dutch conceptual artist, Jan Dibbets, to create a memorial to Arago. Dibbets came up with the idea of setting 135 bronze medallions (although only 121 are documented in the official guide to the medallions) into the ground along the Paris meridian between the northern and southern limits of Paris: a total distance of 9.2 kilometres/5.7 miles. Each medallion is 12 cm in diameter and marked with the name ARAGO plus N and S pointers.
Another project, the Green Meridian (An 2000 — La Méridienne Verte), aims to establish a plantation of trees along the entire length of the meridian arc in France. Several missing Arago medallions appear to have been replaced with the newer 'An 2000 — La Méridienne Verte' markers.
Read more about this topic: Paris Meridian
Famous quotes containing the word medallions:
“A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,”
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)