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# Napoleon's plaster model of a bronze elephant at the Bastille site stood until 1846
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/napoleon-khotel-vozvesti-blestiashchii-monument-svoim-pobedam-24-metrovyi-bronzovyi-slon-sdelannyi-iz-pereplavlennykh-orudii-dolzhen-byl-ukrasit-ploshchad-na-meste-snesennoi-bastilii/
- Published: 2017-06-05T10:01:45.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T19:03:35.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Architecture, Art, Books, Monarchies, Paris

Napoleon wished to raise a dazzling monument to his victories: a bronze elephant twenty-four metres high, cast from melted-down cannon, was to adorn the square on the site of the demolished Bastille. The elephant, on a lofty pedestal, stood in the middle of a fountain, and the creature's back was fitted out as an observation platform. Impressive plans. The sketches of the monument fire the imagination. Alas, the dismal picture described by Victor Hugo is no invention. Such was the fate of this monument. More precisely, of its prototype: a full-size model on a wooden frame, made for a start of plaster and clay and then stuccoed. Unfortunately, Napoleon's elephant was not destined to gleam with golden lustre beneath the Paris sky. For several decades the monument was a veritable burden to those living nearby: the model, built in 1814, began within six years to irritate the local inhabitants considerably. After the defeat at Waterloo, work on the monument was abandoned altogether, and from 1815 the structure, made of perishable materials, rapidly began to fall to pieces. Moreover, the decrepit colossus served as a refuge for rats, which literally teemed in the hollow body of the elephant and in the adjoining drains. Yet it would be pulled down only in 1846!