Colonne de Vendome (Vendome Column), Paris

On December 2, 1804, Napoleon I was crowned Emperor of the French, and upon his return from a victorious campaign in Germany in 1805, he emerged triumphant in the Battle of Austerlitz on December 2 (precisely one year after his coronation) against Emperor Francis I of Austria and Tsar Alexander I. In January 1806, he resolved to dedicate the column on Place Vendôme to his Grande Armée ("Great Army"), constructed with the bronze of enemy cannons.

The architects Jean-Baptiste Lepère and Jacques Gondouin envisaged a 44-meter-high column composed of a stone shaft, onto which bronze plates were affixed. Numbering 425, they coiled upwards in a spiral towards the statue's feet. This curious concept rendered it impossible to behold all the reliefs at once.

Pierre-Nolasque Bergeret, a painter, was commissioned to sketch scenes from the Emperor's campaign, including the encampment in Boulogne-sur-Mer facing England, the army's departure, the battles, and the Emperor's homecoming at the head of his Guard on January 26, 1806. Execution of the sketches was entrusted to a group of approximately ten sculptors.

A statue of Napoleon, bare-headed, crowned with laurels and holding a sword in his right hand and a globe surmounted with a statue of Victory in his left hand, was placed atop the column.