Arras Citadel: A Vauban Fortress in France
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Citadel
On this page10 sections
History
Arras Citadel is a seventeenth-century French fortress in Arras, France, built under the direction of Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban between 1668 and 1670 to defend the town. Vauban, a French military engineer and marshal under Louis XIV, shaped much of France’s defensive system. The main works were halted in 1670, although associated buildings were added later.
Foundation and strategic role
Five possible locations were considered for the citadel: within Arras, near the Grand-Place, at the Ronville Gate, at the Baudimont work, and between the Amiens and Hagerue gates. The last location was selected because it formed a right angle between the town and the historic cité.
Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister of King Louis XIII, had secured the French conquest of Arras in 1640. Fighting between French and Spanish forces continued in the region until the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678 fixed the frontier. Arras Citadel then formed part of the second defensive line of Vauban’s Pré carré, a network of fortified places arranged along France’s northern frontier in two lines to protect the kingdom from invasion. It stood between the fortified towns of Béthune and Douai.
The citadel was never attacked and saw little military use. This circumstance gave it the nickname “the beautiful useless one,” or la belle inutile. One explanation links the name to the lack of a military servitude, a restricted zone separating the town from the fortress.
Prison, occupation, and commemoration
Some underground passages were used as a prison in 1715. After the Constitutional Charter of 14 August 1830, the citadel’s temple was converted into a storehouse and later deteriorated.
During the German occupation of France in the Second World War, the citadel became a prison and execution site. Between August 1941 and July 1944, 218 people were shot in its ditches. Most were French, alongside victims from Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Their ages ranged from 16 to 69.
Among those executed were Julien Hapiot, a communist member of the Resistance, who was shot in September 1943, and Alfred Touny and Jean Cavaillès, both members of the Resistance, who were shot in April 1944. The Resistance comprised movements opposing German occupation and the collaborationist authorities in France.
A memorial wall bearing 218 name plaques was inaugurated at the citadel on 18 September 1949. Public subscriptions financed the plaques, which commemorated more than 200 members of the Resistance, many of them victims of German repression after the miners’ strike of 1941. The inauguration was politically contentious because the inscriptions identifying communist affiliations prompted debate. Speeches by Auguste Lecœur, a communist trade-union leader, and Guy Mollet, a French socialist politician, presented conflicting views about the political use of the memorial site. An execution post had previously been inaugurated there by President Vincent Auriol on 13 July 1947.
Protection and later transformation
Parts of the citadel received protection as French historic monuments, a legal status for protected historic buildings, in 1920 and 1929. The whole site was protected in 2012. In 2008, it became part of the UNESCO World Heritage property “Fortifications of Vauban,” which includes twelve principal fortifications associated with Vauban’s defensive system.
Military use ended in 2010, when the state transferred management to the Communauté urbaine d’Arras. A redevelopment process began that year. A conversion project announced in 2011 proposed leisure, housing, economic, and community-administration uses while seeking to connect the approximately 70-hectare site more closely with Arras.
Remains
Arras Citadel occupies a site southwest of the city center and follows an elongated pentagonal plan. Its area is approximately 70 hectares, or 72 hectares when the immediate surroundings are included. The fortification works remained incomplete, and the plans were not fully carried out. Construction affected Arras’s city ramparts, which were later demolished, while the esplanade had not yet been formed.
Entrance and defensive works
The main entrance is the Porte Royale, a vaulted opening set within a decorated facade. An inscription above the doorway gave the year 1670, identified as the citadel’s inauguration year. A drawbridge once led to the roadway through the entrance. Two portcullises, heavy gridded gates that dropped vertically to block the passage, protected the approach. Behind them were a guard room and an armory.
Buildings around the Place d’Armes
Chapel of Saint Louis
Most buildings around the inner Place d’Armes date from the seventeenth century. The chapel, also identified as the Chapel of Saint Louis, was built in 1673. It was converted into a storehouse in 1830 and later deteriorated.
Schramm Barracks
The Schramm Barracks was added between 1680 and 1682, forming part of the group of later seventeenth-century buildings around the inner square.
Execution memorial
The ditches contain the Second World War execution memorial. Known as the Wall of the Executed, it bears 218 plaques, each engraved with the name of one victim. A separate entrance plaque commemorates the 218 people executed in the ditches between 1941 and 1944, preserving the site’s association with the wartime prison and executions.
Nearby sites
