Fontaine Saint-Michel
Coordinates: 48°51′11.32″N 2°20′37.32″E / 48.8531444°N 2.3437000°E
The Fontaine Saint-Michel (French pronunciation: [fɔ̃.tɛn sɛ̃.mi.ʃɛl]) is a monumental fountain located in Place Saint-Michel in the 5th arrondissement in Paris. It was constructed in 1858–1860 during the French Second Empire by the architect Gabriel Davioud.
The fontaine Saint-Michel was part of the great project for the reconstruction of Paris overseen by Baron Haussmann during the French Second Empire. In 1855 Haussmann completed an enormous new boulevard, originally called boulevard de Sébastopol-rive-gauche, now called Boulevard Saint-Michel, which opened up the small place Pont-Saint-Michel into a much larger space. Haussmann asked the architect of the service of promenades and plantations of the prefecture, Gabriel Davioud, to design a fountain which would be appropriate in scale to the new square. As the architect of the prefecture, he was able to design not only the fountain but also the facades of the new buildings around it, giving coherence to the square, but he also had to deal with the demands of the prefet and city administration, which was paying for the project.
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