la Fontaine de Montreuil

The Fontaine de Montreuil stands out with its tall, square stone pillar topped by a bronze eagle with wings spread wide. It was built in eighteen hundred and ten under the orders of Napoleon Bonaparte, who wanted to bring clean drinking water to the growing working-class neighborhoods of Paris. The architect Jean-Marie Viel designed it to pull water from the Canal de l'Ourcq. For years, local residents queued here with buckets, relying on it as their primary source for daily water.