Elephant of the Bastille

The Elephant of the Bastille is a colossal, decaying wooden carcass wrapped in plaster that once loomed over the square. Napoleon Bonaparte ordered its construction to celebrate his military victories, envisioning a bronze beast with a staircase inside its leg leading to a viewing platform in the howdah. It remained a full-scale wooden model for decades, housing swarms of rats that Victor Hugo later immortalized as a refuge for the street urchin Gavroche in his novel, Les Miserables.