Hommage à Arago, Installation artwork in Paris, France
Hommage à Arago is an art installation consisting of 135 bronze medallions set into the ground along the Paris meridian. These small plaques mark an invisible north-south line that runs through the city.
The work was commissioned for the bicentenary of François Arago's birth in 1994, after the Association des amis d'Arago obtained a joint call for projects from the Ministry of Culture and the City of Paris. Jan Dibbets's proposal placed 135 bronze medallions along the Paris meridian, one of them sealed vertically on the pedestal of Arago's former statue facing the Observatory, which the German occupier dismantled and melted down during the Second World War. Some medallions have since been stolen, moved or covered.
Each medallion carries the name "Arago" in capitals, with a raised N and S marking the meridian's direction. The line crosses six arrondissements, from the 18th to the 14th, over 9 km between the porte de Montmartre and the Cité universitaire. Some sit in symbolic spots: the Observatoire de Paris, the Jardin du Luxembourg and inside the Louvre.
The medallions run along the Paris meridian for about 9 km, from Porte de Montmartre in the 18th arrondissement south to the Cité universitaire in the 14th, crossing six arrondissements. Look down at the pavement: each disc is 12 cm across, with the name Arago and the letters N and S showing the meridian's direction. One medallion is set vertically on the pedestal of the former Arago statue, place de l'Île-de-Sein.
Dan Brown's 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code has Robert Langdon follow the medallions along what the book calls the "Rose Line". On his actual route no medallion exists: the Paris meridian runs about a hundred metres east of the Louvre's inverted pyramid, so medallions were added specially for the film adaptation.
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