Searching
for the remain of Bastille Fortress/Carlos Pueblo
I saw the traffic
sign to Bastille when I got off Chatelet Station on my walk to
Louvre
Palace. I reminded myself to come back to visit the site of Bastille Prison
during the
great French Revolution. I love history especially its story beyond the
textbook and
now I even have had the opportunity to visit the place. The next
morning
after the visit of the Avenue Champs-Elysees, I took the subway to Bastille
Station for
a visit. I had been informed several times that the Fortress site had been
torn down
and built a huge opera house yet I still liked to find the site of small remain
of the
Fortress. I didn’t think that the French authority would ignore such historical
significance
and I was almost wrong. I found a small Chinese vegetarian restaurant for
lunch and
the employees of that restaurant had no idea of what I talked about. During
my school
time early in my life, I had to recite this piece of history and answered
correctly
in order to
pass the schools entrance examinations.
Those of us who
love history always like to visit the historical sites such as battlefield and
memorial etc.
One day I did pass by Bastille again and I wondered in front of the opera house
for some
time and still had no clue of the remain of prison site and I almost gave up
searching
idea until
one day. I ran into three fellow Taiwanese tourists at the stair of Stalingrad
Station
on my way
back to the city from Montmartre. One of the lady told me that indeed there was
indeed a
small remain site inside a small park near the original site of the Fortress. I
went back
to Bastille
to locate such small park. A gentleman in a gated office behind the opera house
escorting me out of the gate and pointed the opera house and said that was the
prison site. I
was still
not giving it up. I walked down to the street away from the opera house and
tried to
locate such
small remain site and I found the famous Promenade Plantee.
There are
many restaurants across the Bastille square from the opera house. On my 4th
visit of
Bastille, I
asked several restaurant waiters about the remains of the old fortress. They pointed
a kiosco
magazine owner who was the Bastille native. He told me to ask the subway
employee
inside the
station. I got the correct answer from a second person referred by the first
one. The
memorial
site is on the wall of line 5 toward Bobigny-Pablo Picasso Station. I did find
the site on
a piece of
wall with some stones and illustrations. The Fortress was built to protect
Paris from the British invasion and later was converted to a prison for the
dissidents. When the riot broke
out, there
were only seven prisoners in it. The rioters, or the revolutionary, were mainly
for the
the weapons
and ammunition. It was on 14th day of July, 1789.
It is the
Bastille Day, 07/14, international day of celebration for the start of human
right movement. France since then has been tampered so many years with numerous
wars until
the end of
World War II. I checked on Google France after Napoleon, French people have
been
suffered a lot.
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