Zouave (Pont de l'Alma)

The Zouave statue is a stone sentinel standing on the pier of the Pont de l Alma. Sculpted in eighteen fifty-six by Georges Diebolt, he represents a light infantry soldier from the French army who served in the Crimean War. He is the last remaining figure of four original military statues that once decorated the bridge to honor those who fought in the Battle of the Alma. While the other soldiers were relocated during a bridge reconstruction in the nineteen seventies, this lone infantryman remained, keeping watch over the Seine as he has done for over a century and a half.