First French Empire

The Vendôme Column rises forty-four meters above the center of the Place Vendôme, distinguished by a spiraling sheath of bronze plates that wrap around its stone core. Commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Austerlitz in eighteen oh five, the monument was designed to echo the scale and purpose of Trajan’s Column in Rome. Sculptors cast the bronze for these four hundred and twenty-five relief panels using metal taken from captured enemy cannons, documenting the campaigns of the Grande Armée in intricate detail.