Bastille into an open public area, with a tall column at the centre surrounded by fountains, dedicated to Louis XVI as the "restorer of public freedom". The number of prisoners held in the Bastille at any one time declined sharply towards the end of Louis's reign; the prison contained ten prisoners in September 1782 and, despite a mild increase at the beginning of 1788, by July 1789 only seven prisoners remained in custody. Before any official scheme to close the prison could be enacted, however, disturbances across Paris brought a more violent end to the Bastille. By July 1789, revolutionary sentiment
Paris in the 18th century replaced by a new model called a "réverbère" which, mounted on a lamp post, gave off a much brighter light. By 1789, there were 5,694 new lanterns in service. A few years later the most popular revolutionary song, "Ça ira!" urged Parisians to hang aristocrats from the new lanterns. The predominant architectural style in Paris from the mid-17th century until the regime of Louis Philippe was neo-classicism, based on the model of Greco-Roman architecture; the most classical example was the new church of "La Madeleine", whose construction began in 1764. It was so widely used that it invited criticism: just