Remains
Due to its destruction after 1789, very little remains of the Bastille in the 21st century. During the excavations for the Métro underground train system in 1899, the foundations of the Liberté Tower were uncovered and moved to the corner of the Boulevard Henri IV and the Quai de Celestins, where they can still be seen today. The Pont de la Concorde contains stones reused from the Bastille.
Some relics of the Bastille survive: the Carnavalet Museum holds objects including one of the stone models of the Bastille made by Palloy and the rope ladder used by Latude to escape from the prison roof in the 18th century, while the mechanism and bells of the prison clock are exhibited in Musée Européen d'Art Campanaire at L'Isle-Jourdain. The key to the Bastille was given to George Washington in 1790 by Lafayette and is displayed in the historic house of Mount Vernon. The Bastille's archives are now held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
The Place de la Bastille still occupies most of the location of the Bastille, and the Opéra Bastille was built on the square in 1989 to commemorate the bicentennial anniversary of the storming of the prison. The surrounding area has largely been redeveloped from its 19th-century industrial past. The ditch that originally linked the defences of the fortress to the River Seine had been dug out at the start of the 19th century to form the industrial harbour of the Bassin de l'Arsenal, linked to the Canal Saint Martin, but is now a marina for pleasure boats, while the Promenade Plantée links the square with redeveloped parklands to the east.
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Famous quotes containing the word remains:
“The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine having yielded their crop, it remains to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, the Orinoco, the St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce. Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become a fiction of the past,—as it is to some extent a fiction of the present,—the poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The accent of a man’s native country remains in his mind and his heart, as it does in his speech.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Who the first inhabitants of Britain were, whether natives or immigrants, remains obscure; one must remember we are dealing with barbarians.”
—Tacitus (c. 55–120)