Fontaine Saint-Michel

The Fontaine Saint-Michel features a massive bronze sculpture of the archangel Michael subduing a winged devil, built directly into the wall of a corner building. Baron Haussmann ordered this monument during his radical overhaul of Paris in the eighteen fifties to fill a gap in the cityscape. When the work was unveiled, Parisians joked that the devil looked remarkably like Napoleon the Third, prompting the police to keep a close watch on the site during the initial public reception.