Wallace Fountains Paris: history, models, caryatids and where to find them

Par Gabriel Goldberg 2 September 2026 11 min read

You walk past them a thousand times without seeing them. A bottle-green cast-iron kiosk, four draped women holding up a scaled dome, a thin stream of water. Then one day you stop, you read the small plaque, and you discover that this ordinary piece of Parisian street furniture was born from one of the most generous stories of the nineteenth century: a British aristocrat who, in the aftermath of a war and a civil war, paid for the drinking water of the poorest Parisians himself. Close view of a large-model Wallace fountain on a Parisian square lined with plane trees: four bottle-green cast-iron caryatids in classical drapery hold the scaled dome above their heads, topped by its slender spire. In short: Wallace fountains are free public drinking fountains given to Paris by the British philanthropist Sir Richard Wallace , sketched by him, sculpted by Charles-Auguste Lebourg and cast by the Val d'Osne foundry. The first was inaugurated in August 1872 on boulevard de la Villette . Paris now has close to 160 across all variants, including roughly 107 large caryatid models (2.71 m), around 40 small garden models, 2 colonnette models and a single wall-mounted model . They run from 15 March to 15 November ; the water is shut off in winter to prevent frost damage. 1. 1870-1871: Paris is thirsty, and wine costs less than water To understand the Wallace fountains, remember what Paris looked like in 1871. Within months the city absorbed the Franco-Prussian War , a four-month siege during…