Place de la Concorde, Paris! It’s a rock, it’s a peak, it’s a cape! What am I saying, is it a course? It is an Obelisk, erected under Louis Philippe. A gift from the Viceroy of Egypt, and you probably know it, Méhemed Ali had offered to France, a pair of Obelisk. But only one was carried from the Nile to the Seine, an exceptional expedition that lasted two years. So when it was inaugurated in 1836, a huge crowd flocked to Place de la Concorde, practically as large as for the execution of King Louis XVI.
So that’s the story, and for more than 150 years, the 22-metre-high Obelisk has always aroused desires for climbing. The first to climb the Egyptian column? Thirty-year-old guy in 1949. It took the big ladder of the fire department to get him back.
Second media ascent on the Obelisk in 1998, the spider-man. Without ropes, without rivets, without an ice axe, only by the strength of his arms and his dexterity.
The Obelisk of Concorde in Paris, in reality the Obelisk of Luxor, has always been for the greatest pride of Parisians. It is a monument still in erection and even more so on this day in 1993, when Act-Up activists, to warn of the ravages of AIDS, put on the Obelisk a giant pink condom, in size XXL.
So we never knew if the condom that covered the Obelisk in 1993 bore the Mannix or Durex brand, but we could not very well have started again in 2022, because once again, the Obelisk disappeared under a packaging. Phew it’s not about the antics of the performer Christo, no the Obelisk of Luxor is under construction, it offers itself a facelift on the occasion of the bicentenary of the deciphering of hieroglyphs by Champollion and once again, it’s a Parisian story!