The Fontaine des Trois Grâces is a story that holds, in miniature, the whole history of Montpellier. Designed by the city architect Jacques Donnat, with its sculpture entrusted to the Marseille artist Étienne d'Antoine, the fountain was first conceived to grace the place de la Canourgue — in the second half of the 18th century, the city's most prestigious square. But its road to fame was anything but smooth. The decision to raise it came in June 1770; d'Antoine was chosen in 1773 and ordered his marble from Carrara; and though the work was officially completed and "received" in 1776, a long and twisting lawsuit between the sculptor and the city left it abandoned for years in the old consular building. Only with the easing of revolutionary tensions, on the 19th of Floréal Year V (1797), was it finally installed on the place de la Comédie, after the demolition of the porte de Lattes. Its basin, it's said, was even reused from the marble base of the statue of Louis XIV at the Peyrou, destroyed during the Revolution.
The work itself is a graceful tableau. At its centre, atop a heap of rocks, cherubs are arranged in three pairs; above them, a small circular platform bears a twisted marble socle supporting the Three Graces. They stand back to back, holding hands, one arm raised and the other lowered, garlands of roses in their grasp. In myth, the Graces were the daughters of Zeus and the Oceanid nymph Eurynomé — granddaughters of Ocean and Tethys, and known to the Greeks as the Charites. They embodied the beauty of life, seduction, and even fertility: Aglaé for incomparable beauty and splendour, Euphrosyne for joy and gaiety, and Thalia as goddess of celebrations, feasts, and great banquets — fitting figures, surely, for the city of Montpellier.
The statue was shuffled this way and that across the place de la Comédie as its surroundings changed over the decades, finding a seemingly definitive home in 1894 atop the famous "Œuf" — the egg-shaped centrepiece of the square — which it has watched over ever since with a jealous gaze, returning the familiar glances of the countless Montpelliérains passing at its feet. New works in 1976 nudged it a few metres along, but the greatest move came in 1989: weakened by atmospheric pollution and ever-denser traffic, the original was removed, spent two years at the Musée Fabre, and was finally placed in the hall of the Opéra Comédie for its protection. What crowns the Œuf today is therefore a faithful resin copy.
The fountain was given a full renovation completed in January 2003, with two basins lined in calandons recalling its earlier appearance, water effects of cascades over the steps and crossed jets, and a nocturnal lighting scheme bathing the rim, the outer channel, and the little cherubs in blue. Copy or not, the Fontaine des Trois Grâces remains one of the great symbols of Montpellier — one to which the whole city stays deeply attached — standing at the very heart of the place de la Comédie.