page_title: Paris meridian
section_title: The Arago medallions
hierarchical_section_title: Paris meridian / The Arago medallions
context_page_description: The Paris meridian is a meridian line running through the Paris Observatory in Paris, France – now longitude 2°20′14.03″ East. It was a long-standing rival to the Greenwich meridian as the prime meridian of the world. The "Paris meridian arc" or "French meridian arc" is the name of the meridian arc measured along the Paris meridian.
  The French meridian arc was important for French cartography, inasmuch as the triangulations of France began with the measurement of the French meridian arc. Moreover, the French meridian arc was important for geodesy as it was one of the meridian arcs which were measured in order to determine the figure of the Earth. The determination of the figure of the earth was a problem of the highest importance in astronomy, inasmuch as the diameter of the earth was the unit to which all celestial distances had to be referred.
context_section_description: In 1994 the Arago Association and the city of Paris commissioned a Dutch conceptual artist, Jan Dibbets, to create a memorial to Arago.  Dibbets came up with the idea of setting 135 bronze medallions (although only 121 are documented in the official guide to the medallions) into the ground along the Paris meridian between the northern and southern limits of Paris: a total distance of 9.2 kilometres/5.7 miles. Each medallion is 12 cm in diameter and marked with the name ARAGO plus N and S pointers.
  Another project, the Green Meridian (An 2000 — La Méridienne Verte), aims to establish a plantation of trees along the entire length of the meridian arc in France. Several missing Arago medallions appear to have been replaced with the newer 'An 2000 — La Méridienne Verte' markers.
caption: One of the 135 Arago medallions.  This one is located near the Louvre Pyramid.
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