The Fountains in Paris originally provided drinking water for city residents, and now are decorative features in the city's squares and parks. Paris has more than two hundred fountains, the oldest dating back to the 16th century. It also has more than one hundred Wallace drinking fountains.239 existing fountains are listed in Paris et ses fontaines, de la Renaissance à nos jours, texts edited by Dominque Massounie, Pauline-Prevost-Marcilhacy and Daniel Rabreau, in the Collection Paris et son Patrimoine, Délégation à l'action artistique de la Ville de Paris, 1995. In addition, according to the official site of Eau de Paris, which maintains the fountains, there are 108 working Wallace fountains in Paris, not listed in Paris et ses fontaines, making a total of 347 fountains, not counting fountains built since 1995. Paris et ses Fontaines cites the number 365 fountains in Paris. (pg. 19). Most of the fountains are the property of the municipality.
In 2017, an investigation by the cultural heritage magazine La Tribune de l'art revealed that more than half of these fountains were not functioning.
For the list of Paris fountains by arrondissement, See List of Paris fountains.
Paris Fountains of the 16th and 17th centuries
The history of fountains in Paris until the mid-19th century was the history of the city's struggle to provide clean drinking water to its growing population. The building of fountains also depended upon the law of gravity; until the introduction of mechanical pumps, the source of the water had to be higher than the fountain for the water to flow.
In the third century BC, the original inhabitants, the Parisii, took their water directly from the River Seine. By the first century BC, the Roman engineers of the town of Lutetia had built the aqueduct of Arcueil using gravity to provide water for their baths and for their public fountains.
In the Middle Ages, the Roman aqueduct of Arcueil had fallen into ruins and residents once again took their water from the Seine or from wells. By the reign of Philip II of France (1180–1223), two large monasteries existed outside the city walls north of Paris; the Abbey of Saint-Laurent, at the foot of Montmartre, and the Abbey of Saint-Martin-des-Champs. These monasteries received fresh water from two aqueducts; the Abbey of Saint Laurent by lead pipes coming from the heights of Romaineville and Menilmontant, and the Abbey of Saint-Martin-des-Champs by a masonry aqueduct coming from the summit of Belleville. In the first half of the 13th century, these two aqueducts were used to supply water to the first recorded fountains in medieval Paris, the Fontaine des Halles, the Fontaine des Innocents, and the Fontaine de Maubuée.P.S. Girard, Recherches sur les eaux publiques de Paris, 1812, cited in Paris en quête d'eau by Philippe Cebron de Lisle in Paris et ses Fontaines. These fountains did not gush water; water poured out continually in thin streams from bronze masquerons, masks, usually of animals, into stone basins so local residents could fill their vessels with water.
By 1498, when Louis XII of France became King, the water supply of Paris was controlled jointly by the merchants of the city, led by the Prévot des Marchands, and the king. They decided how water would be distributed and were responsible for building public fountains. The water supply of Paris was still very limited; by the end of the 15th century, there were only seventeen fountains providing water in Paris, including five outside the walls. All of the fountains were on the Right Bank; the two aqueducts supplied water, and, as the water table was close to the surface, and it was easy to dig wells there, while on the Left Bank the water table was deep underground and there were no working aqueducts so almost all water had to be carried from the Seine. As a result, the Left Bank had hardly grown since the time of Philip II.Cebron de Lisle, Paris en quête d'eau. p. 32.
In the early 17th century, King Henry IV of France decided to bring water to the Left Bank for the university and for the planned Luxembourg Palace of his wife, Marie de' Medici. A new aqueduct was built between 1613 and 1623 to bring water from Rungis. This new aqueduct supplied six new fountains on the Left Bank, including the present-day Medici Fountain, and one on the Right Bank. In addition, five new fountains were built on the right bank using the two original aqueducts. Henry's brought Tommaso Francini, a Florentine fountain maker, to Paris, where he designed the Medici Fountain in the Jardin du Luxembourg. In 1636 he became the Intendant general des Eaux et Fontaines, in charge of all royal fountains and water projects. His descendants held this title until 1781.Philippe Cebron De Lisle, Paris en quête d'eau, p. 34.
Another major contribution of Henry IV was the construction between 1578 and 1608 of La Samaritaine, an enormous hydraulic water pump, powered by a water wheel under the Pont Neuf, which lifted water up from the Seine to a reservoir near Saint-Germain-l'Auxerois, for use in the Louvre Palace and the Tuileries Gardens. Two more pumps were added in 1673. Thanks to the pumps and the new aqueduct, by 1673 Paris, with an estimated population of 500,000 people, had 16 fountains on the Right bank fed by aqueducts, 14 fountains on the Left Bank fed by the new Aqueduct of Arcueil, and twenty one new fountains along the Right and Left banks of the river, fed by the new hydraulic pumps.
Of the fountains built in the 16th and 17th century, all were either rebuilt or demolished in the following two centuries. Only a few, such as the Fontaine Boucherat, the Fontaine des Innocents and Medici Fountain, all extensively rebuilt, still preserve the character of their time.
Paris Fountains of the 18th century
The eighteenth century saw the construction of thirty new fountains, of which fourteen still survive, and the building of three châteaux d'eau, water reservoirs located inside large structures.Christophe Morin, Le 18e siècle, Les fontaines de pierre, in Paris et ses fontaines, pg. 80. Many of these fountains were the work of Jean Beausire, who, by royal edict, was Contrôleur des bâtiments of the city of Paris between 1692 and 1740. His fountains were usually small, set against a wall, with a niche and a single spout pouring water into a small basin, but they were dignified and elegant, decorated with seashells, mythological figures, and sometimes had imitations of the calcified walls of grottos, imitating natural springs.
In the middle of the 18th century Voltaire and other critics began to demand more open squares and more ornamental fountains. In Les Embellisements de Paris, written in 1749, Voltaire wrote, "We have only two fountains in good taste, and they should certainly be better placed. All the others are worthy of a village."Cited by P. Lavadan, Histoire de l'urbanism a Paris (1975), 1993, p. 304. Translation by D.R. Siefkin. The government responded to these demands for grander fountains by commissioning the Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons (1739) and by an even grander project for a square with fountains, Place Louis XV, which became the Place de la Concorde.Janine Barrier, Fontaines et embellissements de Paris, in Paris et ses fontaines, pg. 125.
Despite the new fountains, the city had problems supplying enough water to the growing population of the city. In 1776, a private water company, La Comagnie des Eaux de Paris, was started by two mechanical engineers, Jacques-Constantin and Augustin-Charles Périer. They promised to deliver water directly to anyone who could pay for it through a system of pipes directly to homes. They imitated the city of London and installed a steam-powered water pump at Chaillot in 1782. The first pumps, built in Birmingham, England, and named Constantine and Augustine, raised water from the Seine and filled four reservoirs near the hill of Chaillot, from which the water flowed downhill through iron pipes (also made in England) to their private subscribers, and also to seven new public fountains. In 1786, after the success of the first pumps, two new engines, Louise and Thérèse, were added along the quai d'Orsay and the Gros Caillou, which, beginning in 1788, pumped water to a tower, which flowed down through pipes to the neighborhoods of les Invalides, Ecole Militaire, and the faubourg Saint-Germain.
The creation of the private water company created a bitter political struggle between those who supported the company, including the playwright Pierre Beaumarchais, the author of the Marriage of Figaro, who was one of the directors and became wealthy from the water company, and those who opposed it, including the guild of water-porters, whose jobs were threatened, led by the Comte de Mirabeau. In 1788, after a financial crisis, the company went bankrupt and passed into the hands of the Royal Treasury, but its technical success was proven; of the eighty-five fountains in Paris in 1807, 45 were fed with water from the company's steam pumps.Philippe Cebron de Lisle, Paris en quête d'eau, p. 38.
Paris Fountains of the Consulate and the First Empire (1799-1815)
The building of monumental fountains was interrupted by the French Revolution; the Place Louis XV was renamed Place de la Revolution, and the guillotine was placed near where the fountains were to have been built. The supply of water and the building of fountains became a subject of prime concern for the new First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, beginning in 1799.Katia Frey, L'enterprise napoléonienne, in Paris et ses Fontaines, p. 104.
Napoleon asked his Minister of the Interior, Jean-Antoine Chaptal, what would be the most useful thing he could do for Paris, and Chaptal replied, "Give it water.".Chaptal, Mes Souvenirs sur Napoleon, Paris, 1893, pp. 357-58, cited in L. Beaumont-Maillet, L'eau a Paris, Paris, 1991 p. 25, and in Philippe Cebron de Lisle, "Vers l'abondance", article in Paris et ses fontaines, p. 39. In 1802 Napoleon ordered the construction of the first canal bringing water from a river outside the city, the canal d'Ourcq. The canal was built by Napoleon's energetic Chief Engineer of Bridges and Highways and head of his service of water and sewers, Pierre Simon Girard, who had served with him on his campaign in Egypt. Girard's grand projects included the Canal Saint-Denis (finished in 1821), the Canal d'Ourcq (finished in 1822), the Canal Saint-Martin (finished in 1825) which brought enough water for both drinking fountains and decorative fountains.Philippe Cebron de Lisle, p. 40.
While his engineers were building canals to bring water to Paris, Napoleon turned his attention to the fountains. In a decree issued May 2, 1806, he announced that it was his wish "to do something grand and useful for Paris." and proposed building fifteen new fountains. He also ordered the cleaning, repair or rebuilding of the many old fountains which had fallen into ruin, such as the Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons and the Medici Fountain. His engineers built new fountains in the city's major outdoor markets, and installed several hundred bornes-fontaines, simple stone blocks with a water tap, all over the city. In 1812, he issued a decree that the distribution of water from fountains would be free, and anyone who speculated in drinking water would be severely punished.
Many of the fifteen monumental fountains built by Napoleon were designed by the same architect, François-Jean Bralle, chief engineer of the water service for the City of Paris, who had worked on the big water pumps at Chaillot, Gros-Caillau and la Samaritaine.