Columns Of The Throne, Paris

The two monumental columns standing before you were once the tax collectors of Paris. They were built in the seventeen eighties as part of the Wall of the Farmers General, a massive fiscal enclosure that circled the city. This wall was not intended to protect the capital from invaders but to ensure that every merchant entering Paris paid a mandatory entry tax on their goods. The architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux designed these columns to serve as imposing pedestals for customs houses, creating a gateway that used neoclassical grandeur to intimidate smugglers and enforce the collection of the royal excise.