Monument to Human Rights

The Monument to Human Rights stands as a stark, white limestone cube carved with the text of the nineteen forty-eight Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It sits on the Champ de Mars, a heavy block among the park’s lawns. In nineteen eighty-nine, sculptor Ivan Theimer designed the piece to honor the bicentennial of the French Revolution. He included bronze plaques depicting chains breaking, a gesture toward the fight for liberty that defined the spot when the altar of the fatherland stood here centuries ago.