Place de la Bastille

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This is the place de la Bastille, a large intersection and roundabout that is named after the Bastille /bastiːj/ fortress, the building that was stormed by Parisians on July 14, 1789, thereby marking the start of the French Revolution.

The Bastille itself is no longer here, but some of the remains of the fort are visible nearby, in the square Galli; I have a picture of them, if you are interested. The fort was torn down not long after the beginning of the Revolution. The actual site of the fort is in front of the building on the left in this photo, in the background; I have a photograph of the site close-up, if you‘d like to see it close-up.

While the Bastille was standing, the area in the foreground was a kind of large ditch, called the Fossé de Paris (“Paris ditch”) with water occasionally trickling through it down towards the Seine River. There was a small bridge crossing the ditch where this intersection is now, and a stone gate (the porte de Saint-Antoine, next to the Bastille controlled passage to and from the city on the other side (the ditch was outside the city back then). In the 19th century, this was converted to the Canal Saint-Martin, and today this canal runs underground just north of the Bastille (off to the right in this photo—you can‘t see it here), passes beneath the intersection shown here, and enters the open air of the Bassin de l‘Arsenal just beyond it (to the right here, but not visible).

The large tower in the center of the intersection is the July Column, which commemorates not Bastille Day, as one might expect, but other bloodshed dating from July 1830.

This photograph was taken from the front steps of the Opera Bastille.

Photographed on July 21, 2000.