Jeanne d'Arc (Frémiet)

The statue of Joan of Arc standing in the Place des Pyramides serves as a deliberate act of historical defiance. Commissioned in the early eighteen seventies, it was intended to restore French national pride and morale immediately following the country's crushing defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. By placing this monument to a legendary warrior near the spot where she was wounded during her failed attempt to liberate Paris in fourteen twenty-nine, the government anchored the city in a memory of martial resistance rather than recent catastrophe.