Kneeling Joan of Arc—the statue of a prayerful Jeanne d’Arc that crowns her birthplace door—armor stilled, sword at rest: a warrior pausing before action.
Meet Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc; 1412 - 1431) first, not astride a horse but on her knees. The statue shows a young fighter in prayer: gauntlets folded, sword quiet along the thigh, the plates of her armor stacked like the ribs of a bell. Her face is steady, hair falling in waves, a small ruff softening the steel. It’s a later homage to her memory, yet the essentials are pure Jeanne—courage and devotion sharing the same body.
Now place her where she belongs: above the door of the house where she was born, in Domrémy. The second image records that doorway—a modest entrance that once carried this very sentinel on its keystone. In a village of ordinary stone, the townspeople crowned an ordinary threshold with a praying soldier, as if to bless every departure that began there.
Print of the doorway of Joan of Arc’s birthplace, Domrémy-la-Pucelle (france): a tiny Gothic canopy with the royal fleurs-de-lis with flanking heraldic shields.
Look closely at the signs above the door. A tiny Gothic canopy frames three shields (escutcheons). The central one bears the three fleurs-de-lis of the French kings—the emblem of the crown whose cause Joan championed. The flanking shields each repeat a single fleur-de-lis, echoing loyalty to France. Beneath them runs a narrow motto band (blurred in the print), a ribbon of words that once made the message explicit: this house remembers the Maid and the monarchy she helped restore. The canopy’s pointed, chapel-like form borrows the language of churches, turning a domestic doorway into a small shrine.
Together, statue and portal tell the story better than any plaque. From this humble house stepped an extraordinary girl. And before the charge and the banners, there was this: a pause for prayer on the threshold—readiness gathered in stillness—then the open road.
