Storming of the 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 the cobblestones, the original stone foundations of the medieval fortress remain. On July fourteenth, seventeen eighty-nine, a crowd seized this prison to recover gunpowder stored inside. They dismantled the structure stone by stone in the following months, stripping away the symbol of royal authority. Today, the square marks the exact site where the fortress walls once stood.