Recent events have put into light how statues and monuments can be disfigured or toppled down, and their values contested or denied. Other recent events have shown, namely in France, how barricades can express a protest. Our article aims at precising the relation between the barricade and the monument. Semiotics discussing with design and anthropology, it proposes an interdisciplinary dialogue to include barricade in urban practices and processes and, in a comparison with monument, point out its diversified effects of meaning. Illustrations are given by recent events but also found in French history and literature. A particular attention is paid to Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables.