The Fountain of the Innocents and its place in the Paris cityscape, 1549-1788',
Urban History (forthcoming).Abstract: This article analyses how the Fountain of the Innocents appeared and also how it was used and perceived as part of the Paris cityscape. In the 1780s, the plan to transform the Holy Innocents' Cemetery into a market cast doubt on the Fountain's future; earlier perceptions now shaped discussions over reusing it as part of the transformed quarter. The article documents how the Fountain was dismantled in 1787 and re-created the following year according to a new design, explaining why it was created in this form. The Fountain of the Innocents was one of the most iconic features in the Paris cityscape for over three centuries. But, rather than providing a focus for incremental incrustations of collective memory, its past fame now contrasts its present-day obscurity. Just as this obscurity makes it difficult to imagine why the Fountain once mattered, its present-day appearance belies its earlier forms and urban connections.This article therefore aims to reconstruct and analyse how the Fountain appeared, but also how it was perceived, represented and used between its creation in 1549 and its re-creation in 1788. My contention is that the Fountain provides a lens through which to observe wider cultural and intellectual trends and larger developments in and about Paris. The article will thus explore how changing social practices, administrative structures and stylistic expectations shaped efforts to integrate monuments of artistic, Paris were simply created alongside the old. But between the 1750s and 1780s, a private-sector building boom and crown-led urban improvements transformed much of the city in ways that required destroying existing urban fabric. As a result, many inconveniently placed hotels, gates, convents, churches, cemeteries and medieval houses were destroyed. Decades before the establishment of national monuments commissions, heritage laws and local societies for the conservation of historic buildings, these destructive changes made informed contemporaries acutely aware of the dilemma that urban improvements posed. In these contexts of cultural and urban change, the example of the Fountain provides a striking study of how successive generations of inhabitants of Paris tried to understand, reuse and eventually ensure that the past remained visible through making intelligible and conspicuous a monument that had become incomprehensible and inconspicuous. Threats to the city's historic identity thus prompted efforts to conserve evidence of its historic grandeur.2The approach adopted here is inspired by theoretical insights from different disciplines and authors. While taking a single built structure and asking how it has been interpreted over time follows the example of Bruno Latour's reflections on the Pont Neuf, the idea of scrutinizing the layers of existence of an urban space and showing how these interacted follows Henri Lefebvre.3 In describing the culture in