The Citadel of Strasbourg

Strasbourg claims to be the capitol of the new Europe. Besides hosting the European Parliament, the city works hard to draw the international crowd in both business and tourism. In the past year of living and working around Strasbourg, we've been impressed with the ease that one can pass into Germany and Switzerland and Belgium. It's like borders have become a thing of the past.

In the past, though, it was quite different. For much of its history, Strasbourg has been an outpost on the frontier. As an independent free city in the middle ages, it was surrounded by city walls. These walls were designed to hold back people and spears and arrows. All that remains of those walls are the towers of the Ponts Couvert, or covered bridges near the Petite France district.

In the 1600's, after annexing Alsace to France, Louis XIV fortified Strasbourg as a frontier fortress against the German Princes and Hapsburgs to the East. His military architect Vauban redesigned the defenses to withstand the new high-technology of cannons and musketry. The old city walls were razed and more modern (for those times) fortifications were rebuilt. The centerpiece of the new defenses were the citadel - a five-sided star fort built on the East side of the city. That old citadel stood for 350 years or so, overlooking the Rhine and in its time seeing changes in technology and national borders. It was destroyed by the Germans in 1870 and then rebuilt by the conquerors to protect their newly claimed land from the French. In the end, the old star fort was destroyed by urban expansion and rising property values, I suppose.

All that remains of the old citadel today is one of the five walls, preserved as the centerpiece of the Parc de la Citadelle. The old water zones, moats by any other name, are preserved in the park as part of the landscaping. All these photos were taken in the park on Saturday, October 21.As a side note, the fortifications of Vauban were everywhere. In this blog alone we have documented visits to Luxembourg, Neuf Brisach, and Bitche. Freiburg, in Germany, was also fortified by Vauban back in the days of Louis XIV.