The story of this place
On 14 July 1789 a Paris crowd stormed the Bastille, a medieval fortress-prison symbolising royal despotism. Governor Bernard-René de Launay surrendered after hours of fighting; he was dragged to the Hôtel de Ville and beheaded, his head paraded on a pike. Ironically only seven prisoners were inside. Within months revolutionaries dismantled the fortress stone by stone, and entrepreneur Pierre-François Palloy sold its rubble as souvenirs across France. Today the Place de la Bastille holds only a paving outline and the July Column, yet 14 July remains France's national day—Bastille Day—commemorating the moment ordinary Parisians seized the levers of history.