July Column

Stand still for a moment and listen. Traffic circles you on every side here, a constant rush of engines, scooters and bicycle bells. Yet in the middle of all that motion, one thing does not move. A tall bronze column rises from the centre of the Place de la Bastille, dark green and gold, with a small shining figure at its very top. Look up and follow it. That figure seems to balance on a single foot, high above the roofs of Paris.

This is the July Column. Most visitors assume it marks the storming of the Bastille in 1789. It is a fair guess, because this is exactly where the old fortress stood. But that is the first surprise. The column does not celebrate the famous revolution of 1789 at all. It honours a different, later uprising, one that many people outside France have never heard of.

That uprising came in July 1830. The French call it the Three Glorious Days, the twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth of July. King Charles the Tenth had tried to tighten his control over the press and the vote. Parisians answered by building barricades in the streets. After three days of fighting, the king fled. A new king, Louis-Philippe, took the throne and promised a more modest, constitutional monarchy, where the king would rule under written laws.

The new government wanted a monument to the people who had died in those three days. Work began in the 1830s, and the column was inaugurated in 1840, on the anniversary of the revolution. The architect Jean-Antoine Alavoine started the design, and Joseph-Louis Duc completed it. Together they created a column of bronze, cast in sections, that rises roughly fifty metres above the square. It is hollow inside, with a narrow spiral staircase winding up to a small viewing platform near the top.

Now look closely at the shaft of the column. Running around it, in gold lettering, are names. Hundreds of them. These are the names of Parisians who were killed in the fighting of July 1830. Many were ordinary working people — craftsmen, labourers, shop workers. The monument is not only a symbol. It is also a memorial with real names, and the dates of those three July days are written here too.

And here is the second surprise. This column is also a tomb. Beneath your feet, in vaults under the base, lie the remains of people who died in 1830. Later, the dead of another uprising joined them. In February 1848, Paris rose again, and this time Louis-Philippe himself was driven from power. The victims of that revolution were also laid to rest here. So the monument honours two revolutions, and the king it was built under was removed by the second one.

Look back up to the gilded figure at the top. This is the Spirit of Freedom, created by the sculptor Augustin Dumont. He is a winged young man, standing on a globe. In one hand he holds a torch. In the other he carries broken chains, a simple image of liberation from tyranny. His pose is light and almost airborne, as if he is about to leave the column and fly over the city. On a sunny afternoon, the gold catches the light and you can see it from far down the surrounding boulevards.

Before this column existed, the square held a very different project. Napoleon wanted a huge fountain here in the shape of an elephant, made of bronze from melted cannons. The bronze version was never built. Instead, a full-size plaster model stood on this spot for many years, slowly cracking and decaying. It became a home for rats, and, according to Victor Hugo, a shelter for the poor. In his novel Les Misérables, the street boy Gavroche sleeps inside the belly of that elephant.

The elephant was finally removed, and the July Column took its place. In fact, the column stands on foundations first prepared for Napoleon's fountain. There is another hidden layer below as well. The Saint-Martin canal passes underneath this square in a covered channel, running toward the Seine. So beneath the column there are vaults for the dead, older foundations, and, a little further down, moving water. Few people crossing the square ever think about what lies beneath them.

Now lower your eyes to the base of the monument. On the pedestal, look for a bronze relief of a lion, the work of the sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye, who was famous for his animals. The lion is a clever choice. Leo, the lion, is the star sign that covers the late part of July, the month of the revolution. Look also at the decoration on the column itself, with its rings and ornaments in bronze. The details are fine, so it helps to walk slowly around the base.

As for the Bastille fortress itself, almost nothing survives above ground. The prison was stormed on the fourteenth of July, 1789, and demolished soon after. Its stones were reused across the city, some even carved into small souvenirs. If you take the metro at Bastille, keep an eye out on the line five platform, where remains of the old fortress walls can be seen. In some nearby streets, lines of paving stones mark where the walls once stood.

The square around you has kept changing too. On one side rises the Opéra Bastille, a large modern glass building opened in 1989, two hundred years after the storming of the fortress. Toward the south, the old canal opens into a marina full of small boats. Today the Place de la Bastille is still where Parisians gather for marches, protests and celebrations. The tradition of meeting here, under the column, to make demands or to celebrate, is very much alive.

Before you move on, take one more look up. Notice the names in gold, the green bronze, the small bright figure with its torch against the sky. This is a place where three moments of French history stack on top of one another: the fall of a fortress, the uprisings of 1830 and 1848, and the everyday life of the city today. As you step back into the traffic, the Spirit of Freedom stays where he has stood since 1840, on one foot, high above the noise.