Dante in Paris

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Statue of Dante by Jean-Paul Aubé
Collège de France
Place Marcelin-Berthelot Quartier de la Sorbonne, 5th arrondissement
Paris, July 2012

“We have just seen erected on the little square of the College de France, rue des Ecoles, a statue representing the great Italian poet Dante Alighieri, the remarkable work by M. Jean-Paul Aubé, purchased by the City of Paris at the Salon of 1880. The statue is in bronze and presents the author of the Divine Comedy in his traditional costume; bits of his laurel wreath emerging from his headdress. A statue of Dante has reason to be in the quartier of the rue des Ecoles, because it is exactly at this point of the left bank of the Seine River that Italy's great exile stayed for some time, in the year 1302, at the time of the memorable battle between the Guelfs and the Ghibelins.” (Images of Dante's exile in 19th-century France, Annali d'Italianistica)