Notre-Dame des Dunes Statue

The Notre-Dame des Dunes statue on your left is far from insignificant. Although the statue blesses the town, there is some controversy as to why it was built in the first place as it was built during a particularly troubled period: the fall of Napoleon III and the aftermath of the bloody Paris Commune. At the time, France was split in two, with two opposing camps. There were those of the emerging secular ideas of the Republic and those of the ultramontane resistance. The latter, who were anti-republican, wanted Papal power to remain above political power. They considered all the misfortunes that were then happening in France as a punishment for the sins committed since the Revolution.  In Paris, for example, the ecclesiastics decided to build an expiatory monument to erase the memory of the Commune and the massacres that drenched the capital in blood. Likewise, Cardinal Pie took the initiative and had this imposing gilded copper statue built! Notre-Dame des Dunes was inaugurated in great style, with fireworks and a torchlight procession. The statue’s ultimate nose-thumbing gesture was to point its arm in the exact direction of the town hall, the ultimate landmark of the new Republic. Moreover, it was in response to the edification of this religious symbol that the city commissioned a replica of the Statue of Liberty, installed on the former Pilori Square. As a result, Poitiers was left with two statues.