The Jules Verne Monument
On 9 May 1909, a grand ceremony was held for the official presentation of the monument by the Académie des Sciences Lettres et Arts d’Amiens (the Amiens Academy of Sciences, Literature and the Arts) to the City of Amiens. Thus Jules Verne, who was elected a permanent member of the Académie in 1872 and a frequent attendee at its meetings, the annual director in 1875 and in 1881, was honoured. On the death of the great author, on 24th March 1905, the Académie launched a public appeal to raise the funds required for the monument.
The unveiling of the monument was the cause of great celebrations attended by important figures, including Mme Honorine Verne, his son Michel, his three grandchildren and Jules Hetzel fils, Jules Verne’s publisher.
The bust was sculpted by Albert Roze and depicts Jules Verne in his prime, surveying the immense space before him, just like Captain Hatteras, one of the fearless captains in his novels. On the back of the monument, the titles of the best-known books of Jules Verne’s “Extraordinary Voyages” are engraved into the stone.
The sculptor Albert Roze also designed Jules Verne’s funerary monument “Vers l’Immortalité et l’Eternelle Jeunesse” (“Towards Immortality and Eternal Youth”) at La Madeleine Cemetery.
