Abstract

Between 1793 and 1794, in a context of civil war and State of exception, the French deputies voted a series of laws aiming at removing all the Old Regime's emblems and signs from the streets and public spaces. In the meanwhile, they tried to define which signs that could be preserved as works of art, in order to build Paris as the capital of western civilization. This article claims that far from clichés of vandalism and destructions, revolutionary iconoclasm could sometimes be ordinary practiced whithin legal boundaries. In Paris, the prohibition of non-republican signs contributed to create a new democratic public space.