Vestiges du Chateau de Bercy

Two massive stone sphinxes guard the entrance to what remains of the Château de Bercy. Once the centerpiece of a sprawling seventeenth-century estate, the castle vanished during the industrial expansion of the nineteenth century. Only these sculptures and a few decorative fragments survived the demolition. The financier Charles Henri de Malon de Bercy commissioned the original grounds, but the gardens and stone carvings were what drew the Parisian aristocracy to the edge of the city for over two hundred years.