Monuments

A strangled cry breaks the frightening silence which hangs over the crowd. The column shakes. All eyes are fixed on the colossus atop the huge cylinder of bronze and granite as the metal cracks. Oscillating its full length for an instant, the column crashes down. A muffled impact of shattering metal mixes with the breaking of brush and clouds of dust rise in the air. At that instant an immense clamor breaks out from the crowd, and cries ring out, “Vive la Republique! Vive la Commune!” The debris rains down on a site of mathematical elegance, a vast octagon, paved in stone. The architecture of the “Grand Siecle” is borne majestically around the perimeter of the octagon; the Roman arcades of the ground floor are crowned by Mansart’s roofs, framed by silent windows and Corinthian columns. The space is an area stunning in the grandeur of its horizontal expanse, lines of sight unbroken except for one feature: in the exact center of the octagon, a massive pedestal and, for more than half a century, a huge column, forty-three and a half meters high, bronze and granite; at the summit, a statue of the Emperor.

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Brickwork · Bronze · Column (typography) · Emperor · Geography · Sculpture · Statue · Telecommunications · Vault (architecture) · Visual arts · Classical Antiquity Studies · Engineering · Geology · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · History · Medieval History and Crusades