Colonne Vendôme

The Colonne Vendôme rises as a massive bronze cylinder wrapped in a spiraling relief, topped by a statue of Napoleon dressed as a Roman emperor. Napoleon ordered its construction in eighteen oh six to celebrate his victory at Austerlitz, melting down twelve hundred cannons captured from the Russian and Austrian armies to forge the plates. In eighteen seventy-one, the revolutionary Paris Commune pulled the monument down, viewing it as a symbol of tyranny, before the government later hauled it back up to its pedestal.