Fodor's Expert Review Place du 18-Juin-1940

At the busy intersection of Rue de Rennes and Boulevard du Montparnasse, this small square commemorates an impassioned radio broadcast Charles de Gaulle made from London on June 18, 1940. In it he urged the French to resist Nazi occupiers (who had invaded the month prior), thereby launching the French Resistance Movement. It was also here that German military governor Dietrich von Choltitz surrendered to the Allies in August 1944, ignoring Hitler's orders to destroy the city as he withdrew. The square (in fact, a triangle) has been restored and now has a bench and one of the city's sculpted, cast-iron Wallace drinking fountains, which run with clean clear water and where you can fill up your water bottle. There are about 100 of these fountains around the city, most of them painted green (though there is at least one red one in Chinatown) and named after Sir Richard Wallace, an English art collector who funded the project in the 19th century.