Place de la République

Construction The square was originally called the Place du Château d'Eau, named after a huge fountain designed by Pierre-Simon Girard and built on the site in 1811. Émile de La Bédollière wrote that the water came from la Villette and that the fountain was "superb" in character. In 1867, Gabriel Davioud built a more impressive fountain in the square, which (like the first fountain) was decorated with lions. Haussmann also built new barracks on the cities, to garrison troops useful in times of civil unrest. Renovation Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë made a renovation of the Place de la République one of his campaign promises in the 2008 campaign for re-election. The project was completed in 2013. The French Interior Ministry estimated that as many as 1.6 million people participated, making it the largest demonstration in modern French history. In 2016, the Nuit debout movement, which opposed the labour reforms of the El Khomri law, began from an occupation of the Place de la République. In April 2019, Yellow Vest demonstrators clashed with authorities in the square in their 23rd week of protests and dissatisfaction over President Macron's government, the weekend following the Notre-Dame de Paris fire. ==Monument à la République==

At the center of the Place de la République is a bronze statue of Marianne, the personification of the French Republic, "holding aloft an olive branch in her right hand and resting her left on a tablet engraved with Droits de l'homme (the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen)." The statue sits atop a monument, the Monument à la République, which is high. Marianne is surrounded with three statues personifying liberty, equality, and fraternity, the values of the French Republic. These statues also evoke the three medieval theological virtues. Also at the base is a lion guarding a depiction of a ballot box. The monument has been described as "an ordinary one, acceptable to a committee in the 1880s and inoffensively unarresting today." The Morice statue was chosen by the jury, but a "vociferous minority opinion among jury members claimed precedence for the second prize", the submission of Jules Dalou, who had just returned from exile in England. The monument replaced the second fountain. ==Métro station==

The Place de la République is: It is served by Lines 3, 5, 8, 9 and 11. ==Streets meeting at the Place de la République==

• Boulevard de Magenta • Rue Beaurepaire • Rue Léon-Jouhaux • Rue du Faubourg du Temple • Avenue de la République • Boulevard Voltaire • Boulevard du Temple • Passage du Vendôme • Rue du Temple • Boulevard Saint-Martin • Rue René Boulanger ==References==