Fountain of Saint Sulpice’s square

January 8th, 2006

Located in the middle of the Saint Sulpice’s square, this fountain has been built in 1844 from the drawings of Visconti.
This monument is called “La fontaine des quatre points cardinaux” which means fountain of the four cardinal points (of the compass cards). It has four faces with four statues of bishops (Jacques Bénigne Bossuet on the north side, François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon on the east side, Jean Baptiste Massillon on the south and Valentin Esprit Flechier on the west side.

In french, “point”, sometimes means “not”. Nevetheless, none of these four bishops was cardinal.

This fountain is in front of Saint Sulpice’s church, which attracts now more and more people to see the gnomon described in Dan Brown’s DaVinci code.

Google map

Entry Filed under: Paris, Streets