The Moliere fountain – rather than a full fountain, and a monumental statue of the great playwright. He stands on the corner of Moliere and Richelieu, near the theatre comédie française, in which the comedians played and for which he wrote, and opposite the house where he lived and died. Moliere became ill on stage during a performance of "the Imaginary invalid" in which he played argan. From comédie française brought him here, in the fortieth house Richelieu street, where he died in a few hours.

The fountain is huge – six and a half feet wide, and sixteen in height, the size of a house, the end of which he closes. Put it in 1844, at the insistence of Joseph Rainier, a member of the Association of actors of the comédie française, when place in a small area cleared. There was going to put a fountain with some allegorical figure, but Rainier wrote a letter to the prefect of the Seine with the proposal to perpetuate the memory of Moliere, collecting funds by national subscription. So they did, and it was the first time in France that people gave money for a monument to a civilian. Designed the monument to the architect Louis Visconti (among his other famous projects – Napoleon's tomb and the fountain Saint-Sulpice). Engraver françois Augustin-Konoa fulfilled medal on the opening of the fountain, a copy of which is kept in the musée Carnavalet.

The monument came out spectacular and elegant. In the portico, under an impressive archway on four Corinthian columns, bronze sitting Moliere works of Bernard Gabriel Serra. Black statue stands in stark contrast with the white marble pedestal, on both sides of which are female figures, created by the sculptor Jean-Jacques Pradier. At the right hand of Moliere – a Serious Comedy, to the left there is a Light Comedy; both look at the playwright and holding scrolls with the transfer of Moliere's plays. At the bottom of the pedestal to three macaroons in the form of lion's heads, out of the mouth of water flowing in a shallow and not immediately noticeable the pool.

Moliere is depicted sitting – obviously at work, but perhaps there is a hint of the circumstances of the death: when he fell ill on stage, he was in the chair (it still solemnly kept in the theatre). Sitting heavily, heavily, waistcoat unbuttoned, face thoughtfully. With the height of the fountain Moliere is just like looking at your house and memorial plaque on the wall.