Fontaine Saint-Michel

The Fontaine Saint-Michel is a twenty-six-meter-tall stone monument built directly into the windowless side wall of a corner building at the intersection of the Place Saint-Michel and the Rue Danton. Constructed between eighteen fifty-eight and eighteen sixty, this monumental fountain was commissioned as part of the massive urban renovation of Paris directed by Baron Haussmann. Architect Gabriel Davioud designed the structure to mask a blind, unsightly wall left exposed by the cutting of the new Boulevard Saint-Michel.