It commemorates the 1790 Fête de la Fédération, held on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 ; the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille fortress-prison was seen as a symbol of the uprising of the modern nation, and of the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the First Republic, during the French Revolution.

Besides holding a large cache of ammunition and gunpowder, the Bastille had been known for holding political prisoners whose writings had displeased the royal government, and was thus a symbol of the absolutism of the monarchy.

Shortly after the storming of the Bastille, on 4 August feudalism was abolished and on 26 August, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaimed.

:* Liège celebrates the Bastille Day each year since the end of the First World War, as Liège was decorated by the Légion d ' Honneur for its unexpected resistance during the Battle of Liège.

On the following Bastille Day, Galois was at the head of a protest, wearing the uniform of the disbanded artillery, and came heavily armed with several pistols, a rifle, and a dagger.

" While Poisson's report was made before Galois ' Bastille Day arrest, it took until October to reach Galois in prison.

On 14 July, the insurgents set their eyes on the large weapons and ammunition cache inside the Bastille fortress, which was also perceived to be a symbol of royal power.

This type of cap was worn by revolutionaries at the fall of the Bastille.

By June construction had reached the second level platform, and on Bastille Day this was used for a fireworks display, and Eiffel held a celebratory banquet for the press on the first level platform.

This was an early conception, and in early times the order in question was simply verbal ; some letters patent of Henry III of France in 1576 state that François de Montmorency was " prisoner in our castle of the Bastille in Paris by verbal command " of the late king Charles IX.

* Dr. Manette, in Dickens ' A Tale of Two Cities, was thrown into the Bastille prison by means of a lettre de cachet.

When Germain was 13, the Bastille fell, and the revolutionary atmosphere of the city forced her to stay inside.

The piece was first performed in Los Angeles at Disney Hall on 3 separate evenings in 2004, one act at a time, then given complete performances at the Bastille Opera in Paris in April and November 2005.

As early as July 30, 1789, shortly after he heard about the Storming of the Bastille, he wrote to his father-in-law, philologist Christian Gottlob Heyne that it was beautiful to see what philosophy had nurtured in people's minds and then had realized in the state.

Paris was besieged by riots at the news, which culminated in the storming of the Bastille on 14 July.

The Bastille fortress was transformed between 1824 and 1848 by general Haxo and took on its present-day aspect.

Although the Bastille was begun in the Middle Ages, later years saw extensive additions, including a semi-underground defence network.

The first cable transport system, installed on the Bastille in 1875, was built by the world-famous Porte de France Cement Company.

The performance was held in the open air on July 28, conducted by Berlioz himself, at the Place de la Bastille.

Les Troyens was the first opera performed at the newly built Opéra Bastille in Paris on 17 March 1990 in a production claimed to be complete, but lacking the ballets.

Although her birth certificate states otherwise, she believed that her birthday was a day earlier, on Bastille Day.

Feeling a kinship with the female revolutionaries who stormed the Bastille, she said in 1908: " I have always thought that the fact that I was born on that day had some kind of influence over my life.

A second trend was a slow shift away from the Bastille's 17th-century role of detaining primarily upper-class prisoners, towards a situation in which the Bastille was essentially a location for imprisoning socially undesirable individuals of all backgrounds – including aristocrats breaking social conventions, criminals, pornographers, thugs – and was used to support police operations, particularly those involving censorship, across Paris.

The former location of the fort is currently called the Place de la Bastille.

A cafe and some other businesses largely occupy the location of the fort, and the Rue Saint Antoine passes directly over it as it opens onto the roundabout of the Bastille.

It is located near the former location of the Bastille and remains of the Bastille can be seen on line 5.

* Place de la Bastille, the location of the Bastille, stormed on 14 July 1789

Following its construction, the Arc de Triomphe became the rallying point of French troops parading after successful military campaigns and for the annual Bastille Day Military Parade.

The Champs-Élysées decorated with flags for Bastille Day

In recent times, it has become customary to invite units from France's allies to the parade ; in 2004 during the centenary of the Entente Cordiale, British troops ( the band of the Royal Marines, the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, Grenadier Guards and King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery ) led the Bastille Day parade in Paris for the first time, with the Red Arrows flying overhead.

In the wake of the 11 July dismissal of Jacques Necker, the people of Paris, fearful that they and their representatives would be attacked by the royal military, and seeking to gain ammunition and gunpowder for the general populace, stormed the Bastille, a fortress-prison in Paris which had often held people jailed on the basis of lettres de cachet, arbitrary royal indictments that could not be appealed.

When the crowd — eventually reinforced by mutinous gardes françaises — proved a fair match for the fort's defenders, Governor de Launay, the commander of the Bastille, capitulated and opened the gates to avoid a mutual massacre.

The attack on the Bastille in the French Revolution-though afterwards remembered mainly for the release of the handful of prisoners incarcerated there-was to considerable degree motivated by the structure being a Royal citadel in the midst of revolutionary Paris.

Although the fortress had held only seven prisoners ( four forgers, two noblemen kept for immoral behavior, and a murder suspect ), the Bastille served as a potent symbol of everything hated under the Ancien Régime.

On 14 July 1790, and for several days following, crowds in the Champ de Mars celebrated the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille with the Fête de la Fédération ; Talleyrand performed a mass ; participants swore an oath of " fidelity to the nation, the law, and the king "; the King and the royal family actively participated.

* Voltaire is sentenced to the Bastille for a year because of his satirical writings.

It is used for concerts, and particularly during the summer festivals, the Corso carnavalesque ( carnival parade ) in February, the military procession of 14 July ( Bastille Day ) or other traditional celebrations and banquets.

The Bastille is one of Grenoble's most visited tourist attractions and is a good vantage point for viewing the town below and the surrounding mountains.

Rush songs such as " Bastille Day ", " Anthem ", " By-Tor and Snow Dog ", " 2112 ", " The Fountain of Lamneth " and " Something for Nothing " have been cited as some of the earliest examples of progressive metal.

His funeral cortège passed through ranks assembled for Bastille Day celebrations at the Place de la Concorde, and he was buried in Montparnasse Cemetery.

It was stormed by a crowd on 14 July 1789 in the French Revolution, becoming an important symbol for the French Republican movement, and was later demolished and replaced by the Place de la Bastille.

Louis XIV used the Bastille as a prison for upper-class members of French society who had opposed or angered him including, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, French Protestants.

Over the next century, the site and historical legacy of the Bastille featured prominently in French revolutions, political protests and popular fiction, and it remained an important symbol for the French Republican movement.

Charles V chose to live close to the Bastille for his own safety and created a royal complex to the south of the fortress called the Hôtel St. Paul, stretching from the Porte Saint-Paul up to the rue Saint-Antoine.

In 1418, for example, the future Charles VII took refuge in the Bastille during the Burgundian-led " Massacre of the Armagnacs " in Paris, before successfully fleeing the city through the Porte Saint-Antoine.

Despite the improved Parisian defences, Henry V of England captured Paris in 1420 and the Bastille was seized and garrisoned by the English for the next sixteen years.

The Arsenal, a large military-industrial complex tasked with the production of cannons and other weapons for the royal armies, was established to the south of the Bastille by Francis I, and substantially expanded under Charles IX.

A bastion, a large earthwork projecting eastwards from the Bastille, was built to provide additional protective fire for the Bastille and the Arsenal ; the bastion was reached from the fortress across a stone abutment using a connecting drawbridge that was installed in the Bastille's Comté tower.