Fontaine Saint-Michel

---

Fontaine Saint-Michel by Gabriel Davioud, 1860
Place Saint-Michel
Quartier de la Monnaie, 6th arrondissement
Paris, July 2002

“The Fontaine Saint-Michel is a monumental fountain on the Place Saint-Michel in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. It was constructed in 1858–1860 during Haussmann's renovation of Paris following plans by architect Gabriel Davioud. It has been listed since 1926 as a monument historique by the Ministry of Culture. The Fontaine Saint-Michel was part of the great project for the reconstruction of Paris overseen by Baron Haussmann during the French Second Empire. In 1855 Haussmann completed an enormous new boulevard, originally called the Boulevard de Sébastopol-rive-gauche, now called the Boulevard Saint-Michel, which opened up the small place Pont-Saint-Michel into a much larger space. Haussmann asked the architect of the service of promenades and plantations of the prefecture, Gabriel Davioud, to design a fountain which would be appropriate in scale to the new square. As the architect of the prefecture, he was able to design not only the fountain but also the facades of the new buildings around it, giving coherence to the square, but he also had to deal with the demands of the prefet and city administration, which was paying for the project.” (Fontaine Saint-Michel, Wikipedia)