The Fontaine des Innocents is a monumental public fountain located in the Les Halles district in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France. Originally called the Fountain of the Nymphs, it was constructed between 1547 and 1550 by architect Pierre Lescot and sculptor Jean Goujon in the new style of the French Renaissance. It is the oldest monumental fountain in Paris.^[1]

The fountain was commissioned as part of the decoration of the city to commemorate the solemn royal entry of King Henry II into Paris in 1549. Artists were commissioned to construct elaborate monuments, mostly temporary, along his route, from the Port Saint-Denis to the palais de la Cité, passing by le Châtelet, the pont Notre-Dame and the cathedral. The fountain was placed on the site of an earlier fountain dating to the reign of Philip II of France, against the wall of the Cemetery of the Innocents, at the corner of rue Saint Denis (where the King’s procession passed) and rue aux Fers (today’s rue Berger), with two facades on one street, one facade on the other. It was meant to be not only a fountain but also a grand reviewing stand for local notables; it resembled the walls of a large residence, with water taps along the street at the street level, and stairway up to the loggia on the upper level, where officials stood on the balcony to greet the King. Its original name was the Fountain of the Nymphs.^[2]

Once the procession had passed, the structure became a simple water fountain for the neighborhood, with taps, ornamented with lion heads, permanently trickling water.^[3] The upper floor of the fountain was eventually turned into a residence, with windows and a chimney.^[4]

Fontaine des Innocents, c.1670

In 1787, for sanitary reasons, the cemeteries of Paris were moved outside the city walls, and the former cemetery of the Church of the Saints-Innocents, against whose wall the fountain stood, was transformed into a market square, the Marché des Innocents. The fountain was scheduled for destruction. It was saved largely by the efforts of writer Quatremere de Quincy, who wrote a letter to the Journal de Paris urging the preservation of “A masterpiece of French sculpture.”^[5] The fountain was moved to the middle of a large basin in the market, raised on a stone pedestal decorated with four lions and four basins. The sculptor Augustin Pajou was commissioned to create a fourth facade for the fountain, in the same style as the other three, so that it could be free-standing.

Because of the poor water supply system of Paris, the fountain produced only a small flow of water. Under Napoleon Bonaparte, a new aqueduct was constructed from the River Ourcq, and finally the fountain gushed water, in such abundance that it threatened the sculptural decoration. The smaller bas-reliefs at the base of the fountain were removed in 1810 and placed in the Musée du Louvre in 1824.^[6]

In 1858, during the Second French Empire of Louis Napoleon, the fountain was moved one more time to its present location on a more modest pedestal in the middle of the square; and six basins of pouring water, one above the other, were added on each facade.^[7]

The market, fountain of Innocents, John James Chalon, 1822, Carnavalet

Monet,rue montorgueil, 1878

excerpted from: Wikipedia contributors, "Fontaine des Innocents," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fontaine_des_Innocents&oldid=387377415
(accessed January 12, 2011).