Architect: Paul Cret & Thomas H. Atherton
Location: Varennes-en-Argonne

Varennes-en-Argonne, where the fleeing Louis XVI was arrested in 1791 and sent back to Paris, is dominated by the Pennsylvania State Memorial. Built on high ground in 1927, it was designed by Paul Cret with Thomas H. Atherton. Cret had gone to the United States in 1903 to teach at the University of Pennsylvania but served with the French army in the Great War. Like his memorial at Chateau-Thierry, this consists of stripped-Classical colonnades with square piers, but here two colonnades face each other across a paved open space overlooking the valley below.

Gavin Stamp