Félix Tournachon, known as Nadar, was a portrait photographer, but he is best known as the pioneer of aerial photography of Paris, using a tethered balloon. He was a friend of the Communards.

Chevalier de la Barre (1745-1766)

The Chevalier de la Barre affair has become a symbol of religious intolerance. On 1st ofJuly 1766, a young man of 20 was executed for, in the words of the judgement: "passing within twenty-five paces of a procession without taking off his hat, which he had on his head, without kneeling down, for singing an impious song, for showing respect for infamous books, among which was the philosophical dictionary of Mr Voltaire".

He was sentenced to have his tongue cut out and to be beheaded and burned after being subjected to the torture of the "ordinary question" and the "extraordinary question".

The Chevalier de La Barre was finally tortured in Abbeville on 1st ofJuly 1766. In the morning, he was subjected to the torture of the ordinary question. The young man lost consciousness and was revived. He was spared the extraordinary question so that he would have the strength to climb the scaffold. He was taken to the place of execution, in a cart, in his shirt, with a rope around his neck. On his back, he carried a sign that read: "Godless, blasphemous and execrable sacrilege". The condemned man's courage was such that they decided not to rip out his tongue. The executioner beheaded him with a sabre stroke. His body was then thrown at the stake, along with a copy of the Philosophical Dictionary by Voltaire nailed to his chest.

Voltaire defended him after his death.

105 years later, the Commune continued the fight for secularism by decreeing the separation of Church and State on 2 April 1871.

In 1897, Freemasons from the Grand Orient de France had a statue of the Chevalier de la Barre, sentenced to 20 years' death for blasphemy, erected in front of the entrance to the basilica. The statue had become a symbol of the violence and obscurantism of the ecclesiastics against the influence of the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment.

In 1897, the Montmartre bronze depicted the Chevalier de la Barre as a martyr, after he had been subjected to the "ordinary question". Chained to a post on the stake, at his feet a philosophical dictionary by Voltaire, which had been nailed to his chest, and the axe that had historically decapitated him. In 1926, the statue was moved away from the entrance and hidden in the Square Nadar, before being dismantled and melted down under the Vichy regime on 11/10/1941.

On 24/02/2001, the Paris City Council decided to erect a new, more classical statue, the work of the sculptor Emmanuel Ball, which is still hidden today in the Square Nadar. A rue du Chevalier de la Bar has surrounded the Sacré Coeur since 1907.

Wallace fountain

After the work of Prefect Hausmann, the siege and the crushing of the Commune, Paris was largely destroyed and the remaining population lived in deep poverty. A philanthropist philanthropist Sir Richard Wallace decided to finance the construction of cast-iron fountains painted deep green to give Parisians access to a drinking water network. Built by the engineer Eugène Belgrand, these "brasseries des quatre femmes" (four women's brasseries) bearing the date 1872 were named Fontaines Wallace.