Photo by Blanca CRUZ/AFP
A statue of Joan of Arc in Paris’s 8th arrondissement is missing a sword after a man broke it off and swiped it for reasons not yet known. As reported by Le Parisien, the incident occurred on Monday morning, when the man approached the monument—with Joan of Arc dramatically riding a horse in mid-gallop—and committed a crime captured by a security camera.
Karen Taïeb, the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of heritage, said of the CCTV footage: “We see the man violently shaking the horse, before climbing the statue and breaking the sword with a sharp blow, using his bare hands.” The sword broke into “a few pieces” and was recovered when the man was apprehended by police shortly after on a street nearby. Authorities have not described any known motive behind the act.
Taïeb said an assessment of the sword would be carried out to see if it can be repaired; if not, it will be reproduced and returned to its heroic pose. “In any case, Joan of Arc will get her sword back,” said the deputy mayor, who called the vandalism an “extremely rare incident.”
The Joan of Arc statue was created in 1895 by sculptor Paul Dubois and is on loan to the city of Paris from the collection of the Musée d’Orsay. It was restored in 2021 and, according to The European Conservative, “is the only statue in Paris portraying the Maid of Orléans holding a sword in her right hand and is considered an important part of the city’s cultural and religious heritage.”