Monument aux Girondins

The Monument aux Girondins features a towering bronze column topped by a gilded statue of Liberty breaking her chains. It commemorates the Girondin politicians who perished during the Reign of Terror after clashing with the Jacobins. When the foundation was laid in the eighteen nineties, locals staged protests because the sculpture depicts the heavy influence of the Revolution on local memory. Years later, during the second world war, the Nazis dismantled the bronze figures to melt them down for scrap, leaving the column bare.