Colonne Vendôme

The Colonne Vendome stands at the centre of Place Vendome in the 1st arrondissement, raised between 1806 and 1810 on Napoleon's order to commemorate the victory at Austerlitz.

It copies Trajan's Column in Rome: a stone core faced in 425 bronze plates cast from 1,200 captured Austrian and Russian cannon, wound in a spiral relief that runs the campaign of 1805 from departure to Austerlitz. A spiral stair inside once let visitors climb to the platform below the statue, though that access is not open today.

There is nothing to walk into: the column is a solid monument, not a building, and the interior stair is closed to the public.

What is worth reading is on the outside -- the bronze reliefs, laid out like a scroll winding upward, depict uniforms, weapons and specific engagements in enough detail that historians have used them to check equipment of the period. The statue on top has changed four times: Napoleon as a Roman emperor originally, melted down at the Restoration and replaced with a fleur-de-lis flag, then Henri IV, then Napoleon again in his familiar redingote and hat after 1833, the version that stands today.

The architects Jacques Gondoin and Jean-Baptiste Lepere designed the column, and the sculptor Pierre-Nolasque Bergeret oversaw the modelling of the bronze relief; the design deliberately echoes Trajan's Column so closely that the monument was known for a time as the Colonne d'Austerlitz before the Vendome name took over.

Ten to fifteen minutes on the square is enough to walk around the column and read the relief at eye level.

Place Vendome itself, lined with jewellers and the Ritz Paris, invites a longer stroll, but the column alone is a brief stop on a walk between the Tuileries and the Opera Garnier rather than a destination that needs a block of time set aside.

The square's octagonal plan and the uniform stone facades around it, ordered by Louis XIV's architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart in the 1690s, are worth the extra few minutes it takes to walk the full perimeter rather than only the section facing the column, and the square is small enough that the loop adds only a few minutes to the visit.

Any time of day works, since this is an open square with no ticketed hours; early morning gives the clearest view with the fewest cars and tour groups crossing the frame.

Winter afternoons put the low sun behind the column from the rue de la Paix side, which flattens the relief detail; midday sun from spring to autumn reads the bronze figures best.

There is no ticket and no door: the Colonne Vendome stands in the open public square of Place Vendome, and the interior stair is not open to visitors.

Not recorded: any period in which public climbs to the platform have been reinstated since the column's last full restoration.

Metro Tuileries and Opera, both on Line 8, sit within a short walk, as does Pyramides on Lines 7 and 14.

The square is fully pedestrian at its centre around the column, though the surrounding streets carry car traffic and valet parking for the hotels and boutiques that ring the square.

Place Vendome is a working luxury retail district: shop entrances have their own security, and lingering directly outside a jeweller's door draws attention faster than standing by the column itself.

The column has been toppled once already, in May 1871 during the Paris Commune, on a decree pushed by the painter Gustave Courbet, who was later billed for its reconstruction; the current column dates from the 1875 rebuild, not from 1810, which is worth knowing before assuming the bronze is two centuries older than it is.

The square around the column is also one of the more heavily monitored public spaces in Paris, given the concentration of high-value jewellers, and visible police and security presence is normal rather than a sign of any specific incident.

A wide shot from the rue de Castiglione end of the square catches the column framed by the matching arcaded facades Louis XIV's architects gave the square in the 1700s.

A closer shot at eye level shows the individual figures in the bronze spiral; a long lens from across the square compresses the column against the Ritz facade behind it for a classic Paris postcard angle.