Place de la Bastille

The July Column stands in the center of the Place de la Bastille, topped by a gilded figure of Liberty holding a torch. Beneath its bronze base lie the remains of hundreds of citizens killed during the eighteen thirty revolution that replaced one king with another. This plaza once held a grim fortress used as a royal prison until a Parisian mob tore it down in seventeen eighty-nine, stone by stone, to signal the end of absolute monarchy.