Elephant of the Bastille

The Elephant of the Bastille was a 24-metre statue that stood from 1813 to 1846 on the square of the demolished Bastille. Napoleon ordered the monument in 1808 to mark the victory over the old regime in a monumental bronze figure, financed from melted-down cannons. In the end only a full-size plaster model was made, decaying in the Paris weather for decades and becoming a den for rats; Victor Hugo turned it into the hiding place of street boy Gavroche in Les Miserables. The July Column stands on the site today. Nothing of the elephant remains visible, though parts of its pedestal were reused beneath the column - a vanished Paris landmark that mostly lives on in Hugo's novel.