Joan of Arc, liberator of France

The bronze statue of Joan of Arc on the Place des Martyrs-Juifs-du-Vélodrome-d'Hiver features the Maid of Orléans mounted on horseback, her gaze fixed toward the horizon. Sculptor Maxime Real del Sarte cast this figure in nineteen twenty-eight, intending it to replace an earlier version melted down during the German occupation of World War Two. The metal carries the faint scars of its history, a testament to the cycles of destruction and rebirth that defined much of the French capital during the twentieth century.