Bordeaux's Monument aux Girondins rises 54 metres above the Place des Quinconces, topped by a figure of Liberty snapping her chains.

It was commissioned in 1890 to honour the city's revolutionary parliamentarians, the Girondins, who were publicly guillotined by Robespierre's Jacobins for taking too moderate an approach to revolution. Every member of Bordeaux's local parliament was executed just steps from where the monument now stands.

The column is flanked by two elaborate bronze fountains, and they have a remarkable story of their own. When the Nazis occupied Bordeaux in 1942, the bronze figures vanished. Everyone assumed they had been melted down for weapons.

Decades later, every piece was found buried in a field near Angers, likely hidden by a member of the French Resistance whose identity remains unknown. They were restored in 1983.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace this layered history, connecting the Girondins' fate to the square's origins as a royal castle whose stones were recycled into schools and workers' houses after the Revolution.