Statues
In the center of the square, there is an equestrian statue of Louis XIV by François-Frédéric Lemot. It is accompanied, at his feet, by two allegorical statues of the Saône and the Rhône, created by the brothers Nicolas and Guillaume Costou in 1720. The base came from a village in the Beaujolais: Le Perréon.
The first statue was created in 1713 and destroyed during the French Revolution, in 1793, to make cannon. In 1825, the current statue, sculpted in Paris by François-Frédéric Lemot, was installed in the square. It was transported to Lyon in twelve days on a coupling drawn by twenty-four horses. The entrance of the statue into the city was a festive occasion that attracted a big audience.
There is also a statue of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry sitting in front of the Little Prince. It was erected in 2000 for the centenary of the aviator's birth.
Read more about this topic: Place Bellecour
Famous quotes containing the word statues:
“Art is the need to create; but in its essence, immense and universal, it is impatient of working with lame or tied hands, and of making cripples and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. Nothing less than the creation of man and nature is its end.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There’s a wonderful family called Stein:
There’s Gert and there’s Ep and there’s Ein.
Gert’s poems are bunk,
Ep’s statues are junk,
And no-one can understand Ein.”
—Anonymous.
“But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?”
—James Elroy Flecker (1884–1919)