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.

Historians were critical of the Bastille in the early 19th century, but now believe the fortress to have been a relatively well-administered institution, albeit deeply implicated in the system of French policing and political control during the 18th century.

Prior to the Bastille, the main royal castle in Paris was the Louvre, in the west of the capital, but the city had expanded by the middle of the 14th century and the eastern side was now exposed to an English attack.

The ditch around the Bastille, now largely dry, supported a 36 foot ( 11 m ) high stone wall with a wooden walkway for the use of the guards, known as " la ronde ", or the round.

* The building now known as The Bastille just north of the old courthouse was the Kings County Jail from 1898 until 1964.

On July 14, 1790, the first " Federation Day " celebration ( fête de la Fédération ), now known as Bastille Day, was held on the Champ de Mars, exactly one year after the storming of the prison.

Prior to 1984, the former Bastille railway station stood where the opera house now stands.

One of his largest compositions was originally intended for the Toronto airport, but is now in the Opéra Bastille in Paris.

As an interesting historical footnote, the key to the Bastille now resides in George Washington's residence of Mount Vernon.

Some castles continued to be built without keeps: the Bastille in the 1370s, for example, combined a now traditional quadrangular design with machicolated corner towers, gatehouses and moat, the walls, innovatively, were of equal height to the towers.

* Arsenal ( Paris ), now a quarter in Paris where there is the Bastille ( Paris Métro )

An early escapee from the Bastille during this period was Antoine de Chabannes, Count of Dammartin and a member of the League of the Public Weal, who was imprisoned by Louis and escaped by boat in 1465.

After a day's fighting had occurred across the capital, Henry III fled and the Bastille surrendered to Henry, the Duke of Guise and leader of the Catholic League, who appointed Bussy-Leclerc as his new captain.

By the time he succeeded in 1594, the area around the Bastille formed the main stronghold for the Catholic League and their foreign allies, including Spanish and Flemish troops.

The Bastille itself was controlled by a League captain called du Bourg.

The Champs-Élysées decorated with flags for Bastille Day

The Bastille Day Military Parade opens with cadets from the École Polytechnique, Saint-Cyr, École Navale, and so forth, then other infantry troops, then motorized troops ; aircraft of the Patrouille de France aerobatics team fly above.

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.

:* Milwaukee's four-day street festival begins with a " Storming of the Bastille " with a 43-foot replica of the Eiffel Tower.

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.

On 14 July 2002, during Bastille Day celebrations, Chirac survived an assassination attempt by a lone gunman with a rifle hidden in a guitar case.

The defences of the Bastille were fortified in response to the English and Imperial threat during the 1550s, with a bastion constructed to the east of the fortress.

The resulting structure became known simply as the Bastille, with the eight, irregularly built towers and linking curtain walls forming a structure 223 feet ( 68 m ) wide and 121 feet ( 37 m ) deep, the walls and towers 78 feet ( 24 m ) high and 10 foot ( 3 m ) thick at their bases.

Garrisoned by a captain, a knight, eight squires and ten crossbowmen, the Bastille was encircled with ditches fed by the River Seine, and faced with stone.

The Bastille overlooked the Saint-Antoine gate, which by 1380 was a strong, square building with turrets and protected by two drawbridges of its own.

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.

The Bastille was involved in the numerous wars of religion fought between Protestant and Catholic factions with support from foreign allies during the second half of the 16th century.

Louis's chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, is credited with beginning the modern transformation of the Bastille into a more formal organ of the French state, further increasing its structured use as a state prison.

Influenced by the events of the Fronde, Louis XIV rebuilt the area around the Bastille, erecting a new archway at the Porte Saint-Antoine in 1660, and then ten years later pulling down the city walls and their supporting fortifications to replace them with an avenue of trees, later called Louis XIV's boulevard, which passed around the Bastille.

Louis XIV made extensive use of the Bastille as a prison, with 2, 320 individuals being detained there during his reign, approximately 43 a year.

Louis used the Bastille to hold not just suspected rebels or plotters but also those who had simply irritated him in some way, such as differing with him on matters of religion.

While in the Bastille, de Launay fell in love with a fellow prisoner, the Chevalier de Ménil ; she also infamously received an invitation of marriage from the Chevalier de Maisonrouge, the governor's deputy, who had fallen in love with her himself.