Column of the Goddess

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The Column of the Goddess is the popular name given by the citizens of Lille (France) to the Memorial of the siege of 1792.

The siege of September 1792 was one of the many battles fought during the French Revolution. An Austrian army besieged the city of Lille. For nine days and nights, the Austrians bombarded the city without intermission, but had ultimately to raise the siege. They had, in the meantime, destroyed many houses and the main church (Saint-Etienne) of the city, which was on the Grand' Place (today the place du Général de Gaulle). The church was never to be re-built and the Grand' Place of Lille is still one of the few local central places without either a church or a belfry (unlike similar cities such as Bruges and Brussels).

Although historians now agree that the siege of Lille in 1792 was, from a purely military perspective, not a significant event, it was considered as a major event of the history of the city by its inhabitants.

Some fifty years later, the local authorities became aware that nothing had been made to commemorate the 50th birthday of this event. They decided the building of a memorial, just in time to lay the first stone in September 1842, but it was not before 1845 that the memorial was finished.

The memorial consists of a column topped by a statue. The column was designed by the architect Charles Benvignat, while the statue came form the scissors of Theophile Bra, a sculptor particularly tormented and utopian. The statue is an allegory of the besieged city, with the walls of the city as a crown.

The statue has been nicknamed the Goddess by the inhabitants of Lille soon after the erection of the memorial, as some local poems suggest.

The memorial is still in the center of the Grand' Place (central place) of Lille, and has been surrounded by a fountain since around 1990.