Photos

It is strange to see a monument with elephants in a city that seems not to have some correlation with they, but here because.

From http://france-for-visitors.com/alps/chambery.html

CHAMBÉRY, 55km north of Grenoble, lies just south of the Lac du Bourget in a valley separating the Chartreuse Massif from the Bauges mountains, historically an important strategic position commanding the entrance to the big Alpine valleys leading to the passes into Italy. the town grew up around the Château built by Count Thomas of Savoie in 1232, and became the Savoyard capital, enjoying a Golden Age in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Although superseded as capital by Turin in 1562, it remained an important commercial and cultural centre. The philosopher Rousseau spent some of his happiest years in the town during the 1730s, proclaiming; "If there is in the world a little town where one tastes the sweetness of life in pleasant and certain commerce, it is Chambéry." Only incorporated into France in 1860, modern Chambéry is a bustling provincial town with a wealth of grand Italianate architecture and a strong sense of its regional identity – look out for the "Savoie Libre" bumper stickers. the town also makes a good starting point for a tour of the Parc des Bauges, a sparsely populated and little visited area of varied Alpine landscapes and abundant wildlife, spreading north and east of the town.

Halfway down the broad, leafy boulevard de la Colonne is Chambéry's most famous monument, the splendidly extravagant, and somewhat off-scale Fontaine des Éléphants, erected in homage to the Comte de Boigne, a native son who amassed a fortune working as a mercenary in India in the eighteenth century, and who used much of his vast wealth to fund major urban developments in his home town.