Justinc / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0
It’s a water fountain. Water falls from the top into the sink at the bottom.
It’s called a Wallace fountain, after Mr. Wallace, who had it made for Paris
There are about 100 of these in Paris. There are also a few of these in other countries, like Spain.
In 1870, the Germans came to Paris and destroyed the aqueducts. The Parisians had no water to drink, so they drank wine, which was very unhealthy. Mr. Wallace was a British philanthropist who presented Paris with ~100 water fountains. They were made in France. They are designed so that only a human can drink, not a horse, not a dog, and one of the women stands for temperance. They’ve been in the streets for ~150 years and still enable people to drink when they’re thirsty. They’re turned off in winter because the pipes might burst when it’s freezing.
