Cities like to celebrate their anniversaries and their roots, and Strasbourg is no exception; it has a fountain dedicated for its 2000th anniversary.
But in some ways, Strasbourg is an exception: its fountain doesn’t portray heroes or events, but rather a Janus-like figure that looks back 2,000 years and into the future and enigmatically bears the city’s name as a Roman camp: Argentoratum.
The design, which is reminiscent of a ruined ancient aqueduct, was designed by Tomi Ungerer, a French artist-provocateur from Alsace whose motto was “expect the unexpected,” and this is it.
The fountain sits at the edge of what was Roman Strasbourg and was built in 1988 as part of a Strasbourg 2000 project.
