Come along with me on another historic walk around a Parisian monument. The great big column (or "stick" as Sara liked to call it) to the left is located in the center of the Place Vendôme, just a few steps to the North of the Jardin de Tuileries, which is just to the West of the Louvre, and along the Axe Historique. You'll also notice that it looks pretty much the exact same as the big stick to the right, which is located in Rome and is known as Trajan's Column. The latter was built in 113 AD as a monument to the victory of General Trajan over the Dacians, and thus pretty old and historic. Lousy Dacians. All along the spiral going up the column can be found etchings depicting the battle. Our ol' buddy Napolean had originally intended to uproot the actual Trajan column and haul it to Paris, but this was deemed impossible, so instead Napolean built his own. The material used in the construction was the melted metal from the 133 canons that were captured during Bonaparte's great victory at Austerlitz. The inscriptions around the column are of course hommages to Napoleans' tromping about the continent beating people up. Both columns are 38 meters tall and have a diameter of 4 meters. Pretty big. By the way, that building you can see in the Place Vendôme is the Hotel Ritz. Pretty fancy. It was really hot that day so we didn't "stick" around much.
Come along with me on another historic walk around a Parisian monument. The great big column (or "stick" as Sara liked to call it) to the left is located in the center of the Place Vendôme, just a few steps to the North of the Jardin de Tuileries, which is just to the West of the Louvre, and along the Axe Historique. You'll also notice that it looks pretty much the exact same as the big stick to the right, which is located in Rome and is known as Trajan's Column. The latter was built in 113 AD as a monument to the victory of General Trajan over the Dacians, and thus pretty old and historic. Lousy Dacians. All along the spiral going up the column can be found etchings depicting the battle. Our ol' buddy Napolean had originally intended to uproot the actual Trajan column and haul it to Paris, but this was deemed impossible, so instead Napolean built his own. The material used in the construction was the melted metal from the 133 canons that were captured during Bonaparte's great victory at Austerlitz. The inscriptions around the column are of course hommages to Napoleans' tromping about the continent beating people up. Both columns are 38 meters tall and have a diameter of 4 meters. Pretty big. By the way, that building you can see in the Place Vendôme is the Hotel Ritz. Pretty fancy. It was really hot that day so we didn't "stick" around much.
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