Erected in honor of one of Napoleon’s victories at Austerlitz, the Arc de Triomphe is one of Paris’ most famous structures. If it had been up to the French architect Charles Ribart, however, at the end of the Champs-Élysées stood a completely different building. A monument in the shape of an elephant.
Charles Ribart designed the three-storey elephant in 1758. A spiral staircase had to be built in the belly of the animal . If it were up to Ribart, the building would have included a ballroom, furniture that could be folded away into the walls and an air ventilation system. The sewage system was concealed in the elephant’s trunk. Ribart didn’t get a chance to build his elephant. The French government was not impressed and rejected his design. So what remains is only his design drawing…
Still an elephant for Paris
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Paris still got an elephant. Napoleon then ordered the construction of a 24-meter high bronze elephant. The monument was to be erected on the Bastilleplein, as a tribute to all Napoleon’s victories. Large jets of water had to come out of the elephant’s trunk, which spouted upwards. Napoleon also knew where the bronze had to come from. He ordered that all weapons captured during the Battle of Friedland be used for this purpose. During this battle, the emperor had won a great victory over the Russian army.
As in Charles Ribart’s design, a staircase had to be built into one of the legs of the bronze elephant, leading to a lookout on the elephant’s back.
Work started in 1810. To give an impression of what the monument would look like, sculptor Pierre-Charles Bridan first made a plaster cast, which was the same size as the bronze version. After completion, the plaster version was already placed on the pedestal on the Bastilleplein. Later, of course, this version had to be replaced by the bronze monument. However, it never came to that. After major setbacks for Napoleon in 1813 and 1814, the construction project came to a standstill. And the plaster cast fell into ruin in the years that followed. In the mid-nineteenth century, the rat-eaten monument was completely demolished.
The Elephant of the Bastille is described by, among others, Victor Hugo in his work Les Misérables (1862).