abstract:The Place de la Bastille is a square in Paris, where the Bastille prison stood until the 'Storming of the Bastille' and its subsequent physical destruction between 14 July 1789 and 14 July 1790 during the French Revolution; no vestige of it remains.
One of Les Mis's student revolutionaries, Gavroche, takes refuge in the massive Elephant of the Bastille, the model for a never-built statue that stood in PlacedelaBastille in the first half of the 19th century. (For the film, it was recreated at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, England.) Though the pachyderm is long gone, the July Column commemorating the July Revolution of 1830 now stands in its place.