Place des Jacobins

This guide to the fountain on Place des Jacobins in Lyon opens with a puzzle: why a landlocked city with no coast for hundreds of miles ended up with mermaids and seashells carved into its central square. It follows architect Gaspard Andre's design, which finally replaced two earlier fountains that had each been torn out within a decade, and the sculptor Eugene Delaplanche's mermaids coiling around the basin. Look up above the mermaids and you'll find four marble Lyonnais standing watch: an architect, an engraver, a sculptor and a painter.