There’s a Giant Lead Airplane Hidden Inside a 17th-Century Paris Courtyard

n the middle of Paris, surrounded so tightly by historic buildings that it looks impossible for an aircraft to have reached the spot, a full-size airplane sits inside a private courtyard. It never landed there. The aircraft is actually Mohn und Gedächtnis, or Poppy and Memory, a massive sculpture by German artist Anselm Kiefer. The work resembles an old military aircraft, but instead of lightweight aluminum designed for flight, much of it is made from some of the least practical materials imaginable for an airplane: steel, zinc and lead. The sculpture measures roughly 13 meters across and more than 10 meters long. Lead books rest across its wings, while poppies appear across the aircraft like projectiles. The Grand Palais describes the contradiction at the center of the artwork simply: it is an airplane made from lead that cannot fly. Grand Palais Its strange parking place is nearly as interesting as the sculpture itself. The courtyard belongs to the Hôtel de Bondeville at 4 Rue des Haudriettes in Paris's historic Marais district. Despite the word "hôtel," this is not a conventional hotel for travelers. In French architectural terminology, an hôtel particulier is a large private urban residence. The Hôtel de Bondeville dates to the 17th century. Its street and courtyard façades are protected as a French historic monument, with the French Ministry of Culture listing the property at 4 Rue des Haudriettes. POP That combination creates one of the stranger sights hidden behind the walls of central Paris. A dark, battered-looking military aircraft occupies the cobblestone courtyard of a centuries-old mansion while apartment buildings close around it on nearly every side. Kiefer has a documented connection to the property. French corporate records show him as a manager and partner of a company registered at 4 Rue des Haudriettes beginning in 2003. Pappers The aircraft itself was created in 2016. Its name comes from Mohn und Gedächtnis, a collection by Romanian-born German-language poet Paul Celan. Celan's writing had a major influence on Kiefer, whose artwork frequently deals with memory, destruction, war and Germany's 20th-century history. HBDD The material is important. A lead aircraft is deliberately absurd. It has the shape of something designed to escape gravity while being constructed from a material that guarantees it never will. The books on the wings add another layer. Kiefer has repeatedly used heavy lead books in his sculptures, turning something normally associated with knowledge and ideas into a physically massive object. The poppies connect the airplane directly to Celan's poetry and the theme of memory. Grand Palais The sculpture did not remain permanently hidden inside the courtyard. In late 2021, it appeared prominently at the Grand Palais Éphémère during the exhibition Anselm Kiefer: Pour Paul Celan. Inside the huge temporary exhibition hall near the Eiffel Tower, visitors could walk around the aircraft and see details that are almost impossible to appreciate when it is enclosed by buildings in the Marais. The exhibition ran into January 2022. Grand Palais From above, however, the courtyard may be the more memorable setting. Paris is packed so densely around Rue des Haudriettes that there is no remotely plausible runway nearby. The aircraft appears trapped inside a rectangle of roofs, looking as though a pilot somehow dropped into the courtyard and then discovered there was no way back out. That illusion is exactly what makes the location so unusual. What looks like an inexplicable aviation accident hidden between Parisian buildings is actually a giant artwork deliberately made incapable of ever leaving the ground.