Citadelle de Calais: A French Fortress on the English Channel
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.2
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Citadel
On this page16 sections
History
The Citadelle de Calais is a French fortress in Calais, France, begun in 1564 to strengthen the city against contemporary artillery and the nearby Spanish Netherlands and England. It replaced much of a medieval castle and became the centre of Calais’s defences through successive periods of French, Spanish, and German military control.
The medieval castle and French reconstruction
The citadel occupies the site of a castle dating from 1229. That earlier stronghold defended Calais within a square enclosure containing six towers and a keep at the northwestern corner of the city. Four of its towers were retained when the later fortress was constructed.
France recovered Calais in 1558, when François, Duke of Guise, took the city from the English. Because of Calais’s position near England and the Spanish Netherlands, French monarchs sought a stronger and more modern defence. King François II ordered a new citadel, and the work required the demolition of an entire neighbourhood. The destroyed area included hotels used by English lords during the English occupation and the church of Saint Nicholas. The Hôtel d’Escalles was preserved as the residence of the citadel’s commander.
Henri I of Orléans, Duke of Longueville and governor of Picardy, laid the first stone in 1564. The Italian engineer Giacomo Castriotto and Jean Errard of Bar-le-Duc took part in the works. Three new bastions, projecting sections of a fortification that allowed defenders to fire along adjacent walls, were added to the retained medieval elements.
Spanish capture and renewed French control
In April 1596, during the conflict between France and Spain, people from Calais sought refuge inside the citadel after Fort Risban and Fort Nieulay fell to troops commanded by Albert VII, Archduke of Austria and governor of Flanders. The fortress resisted until cannon fire broke through its hollow, sand-filled walls and the northeastern bastion collapsed. Michel Patras de Campaigno, known as the Black Knight, led the defence, but Spanish forces captured the citadel on 25 April.
Calais remained under Spanish control until the Treaty of Vervins in May 1598 returned the city to the French Crown. The occupation brought massacre and pillage to Calais. After the French recovery, the city and citadel served as the official residence of the governors of Calais until 1636. The fortifications were later enlarged under Henri IV.
A new church dedicated to Saint Nicholas was built within the ramparts in 1605, commemorating the church destroyed for the citadel. It served the community with marriages, funerals, and baptisms until the French Revolution, when it was converted into a storehouse for food.
Seventeenth-century military development
Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu visited Calais in May 1632 after receiving information about a plot to sell the city to England. They considered turning the entire city into a vast fortress with a major military harbour. The Marquis de Saint-Chamond, Melchior Mitte de Chevrières, directed the part of this programme that was completed, including major works within the citadel.
In 1658, Louis XIV’s reconquest of Gravelines and Dunkirk reduced Calais’s strategic importance. The king nevertheless entrusted the restoration of Calais’s defences to Vauban, France’s leading military engineer under Louis XIV, who developed and modernised a wide network of fortified towns and strongholds. His work at Calais included the citadel, Fort Risban, and the reconstruction of Fort Nieulay.
The citadel also served as a place of confinement. In 1691, the Royal French Navy officer Claude de Forbin spent three weeks there after assaulting a man named Fervaquet, who allegedly owed him 500 livres and had insulted him.
From the Revolution to the Second World War
During the French Revolution, proposals were made to demolish the citadel because its military position might support a revolt or counter-revolution. In 1816, Claude Chappe carried out the first tests of his optical telegraph there. Chappe’s semaphore system transmitted messages over long distances before the apparatus was transferred to the Tour du Guet.
During the nineteenth century, the citadel housed a garrison of about 1,000 troops. Its military facilities included barracks, two cisterns, underground chambers, powder magazines, supply stores, and stables. The southern rampart was enlarged to make room for stables and wartime accommodation.
Bombing of Calais began on 10 May 1940, and the citadel was placed on a defensive footing by 21 May. The Porte de Neptune and Porte de Boulogne were closed, while a command post was established in the southwest. German attacks intensified from 24 to 26 May as Calais was encircled. After severe bombardment, the defenders rejected a German surrender ultimatum. German troops eventually entered through breaches in the ramparts after a 36-hour siege, and the defenders stopped fighting at 16:30 on 26 May because they had run out of ammunition.
The battle almost completely destroyed the citadel. Its remaining buildings were demolished after the conflict, and many members of the Calais-area resistance were executed. From 1941, the German Kriegsmarine, Nazi Germany’s navy during the Second World War, used the site as a depot for ammunition and equipment. In 1944, the citadel was incorporated into the Atlantic Wall, Germany’s coastal defensive system in western Europe, as resistance position No. 15, codenamed Poseidon.
After the war, the site was given a new civic use. In the 1960s, it became the Stade du Souvenir, a sports and school complex with facilities for athletics, football, rugby, tennis, shooting, and archery. The Porte de Boulogne and Porte de la Ville were placed under historic-monument protection on 15 February 1939. The ditches, curtain walls, and the half-moon protecting the city entrance were listed on 27 April 1990. The French state and the municipality of Calais own the citadel.
Remains
The surviving site is organised around the citadel’s defensive earthworks, ditches, curtain walls, gates, and remnants of the medieval enclosure. The fortress combined retained medieval masonry with later bastions and outworks. Its present physical character also reflects the destruction of 1940 and the conversion of the grounds into a sports complex during the 1960s.
Fortifications and entrances
Medieval walls and bastions
The medieval castle occupied the northwestern angle of Calais and formed a square enclosure with six towers and a keep. Four towers survived into the construction of the citadel. A remaining medieval section of the city wall includes the Carrée Tower and the Pavée Tower. The later defences added three bastions, including the northeastern bastion whose hollow, sand-filled construction failed under Spanish cannon fire in 1596.
Gates and the eastern outwork
The Hermitage half-moon, an outwork placed before a gate or curtain wall to protect its approach, was built in front of the eastern entrance. Jean Errard of Bar-le-Duc designed it, and the associated gate is now called the Porte de Neptune. The Porte de Neptune provides access from the east.
The Porte de Boulogne provides access from the south. It dates from the end of the sixteenth century and was remodelled in the nineteenth century. The Porte de Secours leads through the half-moon entrance towards the Porte de Boulogne, while monument descriptions also use the name Porte de Secours for the Porte de Boulogne. The Porte de la Ville, also called the Porte de l’Hermitage, dates from the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The ditches, curtain walls, and the half-moon defending the city entrance remain in place. The Porte de Boulogne, Porte de Neptune, and Porte de Secours are among the surviving gates, preserving the principal points of access within the later defensive arrangement.
Arsenal and internal military works
Richelieu’s arsenal
Richelieu’s works included a large arsenal arranged around a courtyard. Buildings surrounding it stored arms and wheat, while three underground spaces sheltered soldiers during bombardments. Wheat mills and bread ovens supported the military complex, and a column bearing a bust of Richelieu stood in the courtyard.
Nineteenth-century facilities
By the nineteenth century, the citadel contained barracks for approximately 1,000 soldiers, two cisterns, numerous underground casemates, powder magazines, supply stores, and stables. Casemates were protected vaulted chambers used for shelter, storage, or artillery. The medieval southern rampart was doubled to accommodate the stables and provide wartime quarters for troops.
At the end of the nineteenth century, a semicircular powder magazine with a vaulted roof was built beneath the Old Port bastion according to the Séré de Rivières system. This was a French late-nineteenth-century network and design tradition of forts, batteries, and magazines developed for modern artillery warfare.
Twentieth-century destruction and reuse
War damage
During the siege of 1940, the stables burned with their horses, the barracks largely collapsed, and the casemates suffered heavy bombardment. Breaches opened in the ramparts, and the citadel’s buildings were later demolished. The German military subsequently used the site for ammunition and equipment storage, and the Poseidon position added defensive installations to the wartime landscape.
German defensive installations
About 100 Kriegsmarine personnel held the position, which was armed with German- and French-made machine guns, two 2 cm Flak 30 guns, and a 60 cm searchlight. An anti-aircraft bunker for 200 men was built in the northeast. A medical bunker stood beside the Porte de Boulogne and may have been adapted from a French building. The anti-aircraft bunker disappeared in the 1960s when sports facilities were developed.
Modern sports complex
The former citadel grounds now contain the facilities created for the Stade du Souvenir. Athletics, football, rugby, tennis, shooting, and archery installations occupy a site whose surviving walls, ditches, gates, and defensive outwork continue to express the changing military layout of Calais.
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