Last February a memorial was opened on the site of the former Royallieu internment camp. As place of history, it is a reminder of events, setting them within the context of the Second World War and the Nazi policies of repression and extermination. As a place of remembrance, it pays homage to all those who were detained there before being deported to Germany and Poland or shot as hostages. In 1939, the Royallieu barracks near Compiègne in the Oise département was used as a military hospital before being converted by the Germans in June 1940 into a camp where they brought French and British prisoners of war.

In 1941, they turned it into a " permanent concentration camp for active enemy individuals" under the official name of Frontstalag 122, which became a "German police detention camp" by virtue of decree on the 30th December 1941. Resistance fighters, political and unionist militants, Jews, civilians arrested in raids and foreigners etc. - more than 45,000 of them would pass through there before being deported to Nazi concentration and extermination camps. "I got out of the last departure and really hope not to be in on the next one. I am here with some really nice, good people: communists, Gaullists, royalists, priests, aristocrats and country folk - it's an extraordinary mixture", the poet Robert Desnos, who was interned on the 20th March 1944, wrote to his girlfriend. A short respite. A death train took him away on the 27th April to Flöha en Saxe and he was to succumb to typhoid on the 8th June 1945 at Terezin. It was from the camp at Royallieu that the very first deportation train was to leave French soil on the 27th March 1942. It took over a thousand Jews to Auschwitz, as did the next one on the 5th June. A third convoy, consisting mostly of communist and unionist hostages, left Compiègne on the 6th July. Royallieu was thus to become a transit camp for detainees, for the most part political and resistance fighters, prior to their deportation.
A place for remembering Research carried out by the Remembrance of the Deportation Foundation at the History Department of the Ministry of Defence's archive office for victims of contemporary conflicts has allowed the identification of the departure of twenty-six large convoys, in addition to a dozen small convoys between 1942 and 1944. Including the first two convoys of deported Jews, this makes a total of forty convoys. Since the camp also served as a place for detaining hostages, other internees were shot in the surrounding forests once reprisal measures had been agreed. It is to all these people that the internment and deportation memorial is dedicated. This has just been built on part of the former camp by the town of Compiègne in partnership with the Remembrance of the Deportation Foundation, the Defence Department (Directorate of Memory, Heritage and Archives, SGA/DMPA), the Regional Council of Picardy, the General Council of the Oise, the Heritage Foundation and the Caisse des dépôts et consignations (a government body in charge of investing and lending public money). The historian and filmmaker Christian Delage created the journey through history. The architect and scenographer Jean-Jacques Raynaud designed the setting. The result is solemn, due as much to the materials used - glass, concrete and stone - as to the way the floors and walls in the three preserved buildings that remain out of the original twenty-five have been stripped back to their initial condition, and the use of sounds and images to set the scene. Opposite the entrance stands a wall to guide visitors towards the reception hall. Made up of a series of glass pillars bearing the names of all the deportees and internees of the camp at Royallieu identified to date, its purpose is to give the internees back their identities. It is through these names that visitors are introduced to the site. Around the buildings is what is today a garden of remembrance, as well as an exhibition area: plans of the internment camp, group photographs of the guards and written and recorded accounts accompany visitors as they retrace the history of the site.
The memorial provides two routes that are complementary to and inseparable from each other. One of them, the result of the hard work of historians, puts the history of the camp in context; the other encourages visitors to follow their own personal remembrance trail. The history is mapped out along a frieze running the length of the walls of the ten halls that form the tour. It covers in succession: the historic context, internment and the daily life of the camp, transportation on the deportation trains and forced labour and death in the Nazi camps. Documents and archive films illustrate the descriptions. Letters, photographs, drawings and recorded eyewitness accounts tell of life at Royallieu. In places, the images projected onto the walls and floors dominate the whole room. The remembrance trails themselves are an opportunity to meet the many witnesses, who tell of how they survived their passage through this transit camp. These accounts, in several different voices, demonstrate the wide diversity in the backgrounds of the detainees, their opinions and the conditions in which they were held. These men and women are constantly present: their names, their faces, their words and their written accounts remain with the visitor. The buildings are both exhibition halls and "exhibits" at the same time. The walls, floors and ceilings are all in their original condition: the tiles and lino have been removed, to reveal the original rough concrete that internees would have trodden; the false ceilings from the 1970's have been taken down to show the barracks' plastered ceilings; recent paint work has been scraped off to reveal the different layers of materials, colours and decoration beneath.
The words of witnesses The memorial provides many and varied sound recordings. Chosen carefully, some of them contribute in setting the scene. Broadcast all around the place, they are triggered automatically as they detect visitors' movement. Others are transmitted by an audio-guide, available to every visitor. In this way everyone can follow his own audio route, in his own language and at his own speed. The audio-guide can also be used to develop tours for specific groups - young children or the partially sighted - and themed tours etc. The words of the witnesses resonate around the place. They resound off the metal and wooden chairs in the garden and leap out at you as you pass through the corridors of the buildings. It is these different accounts, organised by theme, such as arrival at the camp, daily and social life, ways of surviving, solidarity, loneliness, leaving for Germany etc., that best tell the history of the camp. These sound montages have been created from documents in the huge audio-visual collection built up by the Remembrance of the Deportation Foundation and from new accounts recorded especially for the memorial. At times, the scenography calls on the emotions in a personal way, encouraging visitors to attune their feelings with those of the place itself and to remember rather then to discover. This is why, for example, on the floor in the barracks the positions where the beds would have been are marked using a single line to draw their outlines, extending up the walls to indicate bunk beds. The resulting impression of being cramped together is immediately apparent. In the same spirit, pictures of men and women are projected onto the walls very slowly, one after the other. Letters sent by prisoners to their families have been collected in two virtual albums that are projected onto two table screens, whilst at the same time being read aloud by actors. The tour ends in a room dedicated to the history of deportation, genocide and the punishment of criminals.
The contribution of the Defence Department Through the general administration department's Directorate of Memory, Heritage and Archives, the deputy minister for ex-servicemen awarded a grant of two million Euros spread over 2005 and 2006, as a contribution to the creation of this place of remembrance. In addition, the Defence Department, now the owner of the site of the former barracks at Royallieu, transferred the management of two hectares of land to the town of Compiègne and it is on this land that the Internment and Deportation Memorial was built.
Internment and Deportation Memorial Camp de Royallieu 2 bis, rue des Martyrs de la liberté 60200 Compiègne Tel. 03 44 96 37 00 E-mail: memorial@compiegne.fr

The Battle of Arras Memorial was opened to the public on 1 March 2008. Erected in the former Wellington Quarry, it commemorates the Allied Engagement and the role this location played in the planning of the British offensive of April 1917 in Arras.

In spring 1917, the French General Nivelle, while preparing the Chemin des Dames offensive, requested that the commander of the British troops launch a diversion attack in the sector of Arras.

The main difficulty with this operation was gathering the troops in large numbers without attracting the enemy’s attention. The New Zealand fire brigade were commanded to dig tunnels beneath the enemy trenches in order to link together the old quarries used by stonecutters in the 15^th and 16^th centuries and create a huge underground network stretching 20 kilometres. It allowed the British troops to come out from nowhere, on the morning of 9 April, a few metres from the German front line.

This underground network was the biggest of its kind ever constructed by the British troops. The other purpose of these passages was to meet the basic needs of the 24,000 men billeted there prior to combat, the quarries providing a high level of security despite its close proximity to the Front with kitchens, showers and latrines installed as well as a military hospital. To facilitate their movements around the tunnels, the New Zealand and British troops named the quarries after towns and cities from their homelands. The main quarry was named Wellington.

A recent research programme carried out on these quarries by Arras’ archaeological department unearthed many traces of their former French and British occupants, the soldiers who lived and fought here during the war. In light of the interest these new-found testimonials hold in helping us to understand the everyday lives of the soldiers, a thorough inventory of the passages was made in the Wellington Quarry.

The town of Arras took the initiative to build this memorial, part funded by the Regional Council, the French Ministry of Regional Planning, the Urban Community, the General Council and the Ministry of Defence.

This place of remembrance comprises a remembrance garden and a wall dedicated to the British regiments who fought in this battle engraved with the names of all the soldiers. Documents about Arras dating back to the Great War are displayed in the half-buried reception hall.

Over 75 minutes, the tour pays tribute to the engagement of the Allied troops around Arras, focusing more on the soldiers’ everyday lives than the war itself. The quarry is open to groups of up to 17 people led by a tour guide. A glass lift takes the group 20 metres below ground to visit the 350 metres of tunnels that have been renovated.

This strategic network also housed the living quarters of thousands of soldiers billeted below ground. Drawings and graffiti, bas reliefs, crosses and other features can be seen on the walls, along with traces left behind by the soldiers such as helmets and rusted tins of food.

Each visitor is given an audio-guide that describes 10 sequences illustrated by visual projections and light shows on the surrounding walls: the discovery of the underground world; the traces left by the working quarry in the Middle Ages; the tunnel of history (the quarries up to 1916); the objectives of this unique military strategy in the context of the war; the tunnelling operation in 1916 and 1917; daily life in the quarries in April 1917; the construction of the network, and the Battle of Arras in April 1917. To conclude, a film about the Battle of Arras, based on archives from the Imperial War Museum, is shown in a room at the end of the tour. The memorial hopes to welcome 60,000 visitors a year.

Wellington Quarry

Rue Delétoile 62000 Arras

Tel: +(0)3 21 51 26 95

Office de tourisme d'Arras

Carrière Wellington

On the 22nd February 2008, the President of the Republic opened the Charles de Gaulle Historial at Les Invalides. This "audiovisual monument" is an avant-garde place of learning based on a strong preconceived museographical idea: using sound and images to retrace the route of a man whose own destiny became entwined with that of France.

Covering about 2,500 m², the Historial is a real "audiovisual structure" whose objective is to convey both the history and the memory of General de Gaulle. Created by the architects Alain Moatti and Henri Rivière, the Historial is housed in a concrete structure, invisible on the surface, beneath the Valeur courtyard of the Hôtel National des Invalides. There are no objects here, only still and moving images. In addition, the Communication and Audiovisual Production Company for the Department of Defence (ECPAD) has provided more than thirty minutes of archive films, allowing the production company special access to the original material so that it could make high definition copies. Conducted by the army museum in close liaison with the Charles de Gaulle Foundation, this production is part of the museum's large-scale modernisation programme.
Visitors are greeted on arrival by a mosaic of eighty portraits of Charles de Gaulle, before making their way into the heart of the monument, which is fixed in the ground by an inverted wooden dome. This self-supporting structure contains an enormous spherical auditorium with seating for 200 people, where five screens show a biographical archive film lasting twenty-five minutes and in eight languages. Directed by Olivier Brunet with a commentary written by Maurice Druon and read by actor Francis Huster, this film is an opportunity to find out more about the figure and his actions, set in a historical context. All around this multimedia auditorium there is a permanent exhibition divided into two areas: the history loop and alcoves. The loop is a place for wandering around, made of curved, fluted glass; visitors pass through an area filled with images and sounds recalling the major events of the 20th Century, from the Belle Époque up to the first man on the moon. The three alcoves are fitted with interactive equipment and are designed to allow those who wish to expand their knowledge of history to learn more about its complexity and consequences. The first is dedicated to the man of the 18th June; the second to him as liberator; the third as the founder of the 5th Republic, from the Constitution of 1958 until the events of May 1968.
In addition, all along the route, the bilingual French/English audio guide provided to visitors is an aid to interpreting the subject matter and the meaning of the images. A temporary 350 m² exhibition hall and a teaching workshop complete the collection. The originality of the Historial is in its use of audiovisual and sound archives to bear witness to a century on which Charles de Gaulle made his mark. The general public can personalise their journey through this innovative complex, where the emphasis is on interactivity. A spectacular journey that is both a scientific and artistic way of following De Gaulle's career.
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The preserved structure of this bunker, with its five floors, is unique.

It was to make up for the lack of relief on the Nacre coast that in 1943-1944 the Germans built this tower, which was 17 metres high in order to increase the range of the rangefinder.

From the rangefinder room (the rangefinder measured 4 m in length at the time and had a range of over 30 km), the position of enemy warships was determined.

The information was then transmitted to the floor below (level 3), where the firing calculations were made and then transmitted to the batteries that depended on this fire command post.

It was put out of operation on the morning of the 6th June by a 380 mm shell from the British destroyer H.M.S. "Frobisher".

But it was not until the 9th that it was taken by Lieutenant Bob Orrell, with the capture of 53 prisoners.
 

Le Grand Bunker - Atlantic Wall Museum

Avenue du 6 juin - 14150 Ouistreham

Tél. : 02 31 97 28 69 - Fax : 02 31 96 66 05

E-mail : museegrandbunker@sfr.fr

Site du musée

Site du comité régional du tourisme de Normandie

On 8 June 1944, two days after the Normandy landings, the 2nd German armoured tank division, "Das Reich", received orders to position itself between Tulle and Limoges. The "Der Führer" regiment was put in charge of "cleansing" this sector since German troops had been confronted by a series of actions organised by local members of the French Resistance. On 10 June 1944, the market town of Oradour-sur-Glane, which lies 22 kilometres north-west of Limoges, was surrounded by Waffen SS troops. The inhabitants of the village and surrounding areas, who had met in the town for the weekly fair held there each Saturday, were rounded up into the main plaza and systematically slaughtered: women and children were locked inside the church and burned alive, while men were machine-gunned down in various parts of the village. Soldiers went into streets and houses, killing at random so as to eliminate any witnesses, and tried to dispose of the corpses by setting fire to them or throwing them into a mass grave to prevent identification. By the time the troops have finished pillaging and burning the village, they left behind them a death toll of 642, plus a handful of survivors, witnesses to the tragedy.

On 4 March 1945, General De Gaulle, the head of the provisional government of the French Republic, made the journey to Oradour and declared the site a martyr village. It became property of the French government in April 1945. A law declared the site a historical monument on 10 May 1946. A decision was made to protect the ruins and to build a new market town next to the former village. In the late 1980s, the idea was born to build a memorial centre to explain, for educational purposes, the significance of the event and the ruins to generations not familiar with the horrors of war.
Construction of this centre began in 1992 under the auspices of the council of the French department of Haute-Vienne and the work was completed on 12 May 1999, after which the centre opened its doors to the public and became the new access route to the ruins of Oradour-sur-Glane. Inside a building whose architecture is testimony to the tormented history of the site, there is a permanent exhibition containing a number of archival documents that lead the visitor down a pathway, enabling them to situate the tragedy in the context of World War II. Why Oradour? In order to answer this question, the memorial centre sets out to simultaneously present the peaceful market town that was Oradour from the pre-war period until the tragic events of 10 June 1944 and the increase in the barbarity of the Nazis, in particular by the "Das Reich" division of the Waffen SS. An account of the massacre is given in a rolling 12-minute film. The film draws on eyewitness accounts from survivors and statements made by executioners put on trial in Bordeaux in 1953.
Aw well as temporary exhibitions and a documentation centre, the Centre provides an education team to help teachers who wish to organise a visit to the site as part of an educational project. Led by two history professors, the team prepares for the arrival of classes and offers teachers access to the Centre's structures and documentation. Apart from being a symbol of a France wounded by the German occupation, an integral part of the national memory, the Memorial Centre has a universal message, prompting the visitor to reflect on the defence of human rights and peace.
Centre de la Mémoire B.P. 12 87520 Oradour-sur-Glane Tel: 33/ (0) 555 430 430 Fax: 33/ (0) 555 430 431 Website: http://www.oradour.org
Open every day 9 :00 to 17 :00 in February, November and 1-16 December 9 :00 to 18 :00 in March, April, 1-15 May, 15-30 September, October 9 :00 to 19 :00 from 15 May - 15 September Please note: entry to the centre and village closes one hour before stated closing times. Prices Free for children under 8 Non-guided visit: €6 Concession: €4 (students, job-seekers, visitors 8 -18 years of age, war veterans) Family visit (2 adults, 3 children): €16 Youth groups: €2 per person Groups: €4.50 per person for groups of 20 or more (non-guided visits) Guided tours: €6.50 (call 33/ (0)5 55 430 430 for bookings) Coach and car parking facilities, disabled access. Access to the martyr village of Oradour-sur-Glane is free. The village can only be accessed via the memorial centre.

Located some twenty kilometres southwest of St. Mihiel Cemetery in Thiaucourt (Meurthe-et-Moselle department) and some fifteen kilometres from the town of St. Mihiel, the Montsec American Monument, built on a 270-metre hill, overlooks Madine Lake.

Produced by sculptor Egerton Swarthout, the monument, built with Euville limestone in 1930, commemorates the attacks carried out by the American Army from 12 to 14 September 1918 and from 9 to 11 November 1918 to take the St. Mihiel salient.

A large walkway leads to an open-air colonnade made up of fluted Doric columns supporting an entablature bearing the names of the towns, alternating with laurel wreaths.

At the centre of the colonnade is a bronze map illustrating the location of the St. Mihiel salient fronts. Damaged during fighting in 1944, the structure was restored four years later. Access to the monument is free.

Montsec American Monument Head toward Saint-Mihiel.

At Loupmont, continue toward Apremont-la-Forêt and then "Massif Fortifié de Liouville".

Montsec Town Hall

8 rue de l'Eglise - 55300 Montsec

Tel.: +33 (0)3 29 90 42 83

Comtois, rends-toi ! Nenni ma foi ! (Comtois surrender! Never, by my faith!) This motto is the pride of the people of Franche-Comté. People here never surrender to the enemy. For a long time, the enemy was the King of France.

Franche-Comté enjoyed a certain degree of freedom as part of the Holy Roman Empire to the east of the Kingdom of France. This was enough to whet the appetite of Louis XI, Henri IV, Louis XIII and, lastly, Louis XIV.

With the help of Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, the Sun King was able to bring it into his realm. Franche-Comté became French. The enemy did not disappear, he just changed nationalities. So Vauban got down to work, making the province an impregnable land.

In 1675, Louis XIV entrusted his brilliant military engineer, promoted to the rank of Marshal of France and Commissioner General of Fortifications, with the task of fortifying the principal strategic points in Franche-Comté. After Belfort, Besançon, Joux and Salins-les-Bains, he worked on three structures defending Salins, a Jura town nestled away in a steephead valley (geographical term designating a steep, narrow valley in a limestone plateau in the Jura) and economic heart of Franche-Comté due to the presence of salt mines, the precious “white gold”. While there are few if any remains of his interventions at Fort Belin and the Bracon redoubt, Fort Saint André has preserved his indelible mark.

All the constructions that Vauban had built starting in 1678 at the site of a small fortress from the first half of the 17^th century are there:

• the forward structure whose mission is to defend the entrance to the fort;

• the monumental gate bearing the Sun King’s motto: “Nec pluribus impar” (not unequal to many);

• the crenellated bastions with the wall-walk at the top;

• two 65-metre long barracks where forty fully equipped holiday accommodations are now housed;

• the powder magazine topped with an elegant ribbed vault and a lava tile roof, which is now a friendly pub;

• the governor’s house, which is awaiting renovation;

• the vast chapel topped with a roof lantern, which has long been abandoned;

• the central courtyard with pleasant squares of lawn;

• the holiday and conference environment that now fills the site.

From 1682 to the middle of the 19^th century, this fortress served as a State prison. The men and women involved in the famous “Affair of the Poisons” that brought down Madame de Montespan were followed by prisoners locked up by the different regimes by “lettres de cachet” at the request of their families or for political, military or common law reasons, whether former nobles, defrocked priests, suspicious citizens, sans-culottes, Swiss or Spaniards.

Salins-les-Bains Fortifications

Office de Tourisme

39110 Salins-les-Bains

Tél. +33 (0)3 84 73 01 34

Fort Saint-André

Village Vauban 39110 Salins-les-Bains

Tél. +330(3) 84 73 16 61

Fort Saint André

The collection of relief maps bears witness to more than two centuries of military siege history, from its creation in 1668, under Louis XIV, until the last quarter of the 19th Century when the fortified bastions were abandoned. The Museum of Relief Maps exhibits, at the Invalides in Paris and at the fine arts museum in Lille, an unrivalled collection of a hundred historical models of the forts or fortified towns that were spread along the former French borders. The practice of making relief maps and models of fortified towns for strategic purposes was the result of an initiative by Louvois. In 1668 the minister of Louis XIV was responsible for creating a collection that would continue to grow richer for more than two centuries. The king's engineers thus created relief maps not only of French places situated on the borders of the kingdom, but also foreign towns captured from the enemy. Apart from their military interest, they were valued as prestige objects, testament to the power of the monarchy and the kingdom, as well as being commemorative pieces illustrating important battles and great sieges. Their production only ended towards 1870, with the disappearance of bastion fortifications.

Used in military training, the collection of relief maps now represents an exceptional source of information for the history of the architecture, town planning and changes to the countryside. The models were created with great attention to detail, under the supervision of military engineers and with help from a large amount of written and graphic documentation. The collection, comprising 111 models, mostly on a scale of 1/600 (26 models, 21 other objects and 64 relief maps), first kept at the Tuileries, was transferred to the Louvre in 1700 and then in 1770 to the Hôtel des Invalides. Because of its eminent historical interest, it was classified as a historic monument in 1927. Today it is kept by the museum of relief maps (at the Hôtel des Invalides), created in 1943, where about a hundred models of French and foreign towns are displayed. Sixteen relief maps have been sent on loan to the museum of Fine Arts in Lille.
Hôtel national des Invalides 6 bd Invalides 75007 PARIS Tel.: 01 45 51 92 45 Email: pedagogie.relief maps@culture.gouv.fr Opening times 10 am until 6 pm from Monday to Sunday Unguided tours Full rate: 7.5 € Reduced rate: 5.5 € Conferences Group rate (over 25 people): 120 €

The speed at which Strasbourg fell, on 28 September 1870, after 46 days of siege, prompted the German High Command, under the authority of General Von Moltke and Von Kameke, to formulate a defence plan for the Empire’s western borders that planned to turn the towns of Cologne, Metez, Thionville and Strasburg into fortified camps, protecting their perimeters by a ring of armed forts.

The defensive ring around Strasbourg

Strasbourg was thus protected by a ring of detached, half-buried, heavily fortified and armed structures, even before the construction of the new urban line of fortifications that would be started in 1876 after the commissioning of the first forts. The works began in 1872, under the direction of the engineering officers Hauptmann Stephan (Fort Rapp) and Volkmann (on the Rhine side in the northeast to pass over to Kehl on the right bank via the southeast).

Fort Reichstett (Moltke) was inaugurated on 26 September 1874. Eleven structures were built in Alsace covering a perimeter of nearly 35 kilometres and three structures around Kehl (in Germany) covering a perimeter of 18 kilometres. The line included forts with dry and wet ditches. The masonry, in dressed standstone from Vosges and bricks manufactured in Rust (Germany) and Achenheim (Alsace), puts these monuments in the Neo-Prussian style. Two to three thousand workers were employed, including Italian bricklayers.

Fort Rapp-Moltke

The outpost covered 4.5 hectares and was made up of some 220 rooms and facilities. The fort comprised: an entrance with a place of arms, guard house, large powder store and guard quarters during peace time; a dry ditch surrounding the fort fitted with a covered way supplemented by a barbed-wire fence; barracks on two levels housed the troops quarters and services (HQ, kitchen, bakery, infirmary, sleeping quarters, washing facilities, etc.) and were equipped with a defence system of the ditch by flanking; an entrance into the fort composed of a gate, draw bridge and reinforced door; a central corridor leading to the casemates; casemates composed of alarm rooms, powder stores, munitions assembly rooms, goods hoist for moving munitions into artillery positions at the top of the fort; front and side parapets surmounting the fort, reserved for artillery pieces.

The outposts were protected by: sheltered corridors, a reinforced observation turret made it easier to keep watch of the front; a double caponier above the front ditch, converted in 1885 to a front battery was built in the counyterscarp with a system of countermines and sewers completing the frontal defence system; adjoining batteries to the left and right. Each fort was defended by 18 cannons (90 to 150 and even 220 mm) in firing position; 18 reserve pieces of artillery in the interior courtyards (cannons and mortars). The short-range defence was assured by 90-120 mm cannons which were later replaced by Hotchkiss 37-mm revolver cannons and 53-mm rapidfire machine guns. The fort could hold 800 men (infantrymen, pioneers, artillerymen and guards) under the command of 15 officers.

An evolving system

In 1885, the discovery of picric acid and the manufacture of torpedo shells triggered a huge crisis in military constructions. High Command decided to take the artillery outside the fort to form the adjoining batteries, reinforce the top sections of the forts with “special concrete” and granite blocks, convert windows in the barracks into fire stands, turn the double caponier into a front-facing battery offering greater protection and equipped with revolver cannons, fit out the walls with counterscarps of metal gates and build the entrance via the ditch, install blast-proof doors at certain access points, and reinforce the fort’s defences with two marine artillery pieces, 150 mm on rails.

From 1890, intermediate structures were built between the forts to block up any gaps; these included infantry, artillery and munitions buildings to complete the defence system. In this year, the fort in Strasbourg lost its strategic importance due to the stronghold erected in Mutzig (1893-1914) that had the capacity for up to 6,500 men with artillery in turrets and armoured shields.

Between 1914 and 1918, the fort was used as a munitions and equipment store then a camp for Russian and Italian prisoners. Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France following the Treaty of Versailles and the site was integrated into the Maginot Line as a rear base for the 226th Infantry Regiment of Strasbourg and a rest centre for the fortress troops based in the fortifications along the Maginot Line along the Rhine. Marine artillery pieces were placed on top of the fort around 1937.

The Ney-Rapp intermediate structure occupied by the 155^th Fortress Artillery Regiment, was damaged by an explosion in June 1940. From 1940 to 1944, the German army used the stronghold as a warehouse. It was occupied by the FFI and the first French and American troops during the Liberation. Between 1946 and 1968, the fort was used as a munitions store.

After being decommissioned, the site was allocated to the civil protection department of the French Ministry of the Interior. In 1993, the Friends of Fort Rapp Association was tasked with rescuing, preserving and restoring this military structure. After three years of work, the fort was opened to the public.

Fort Rapp-Moltke

Rue de Lorraine 67116 Reichstett

Contact: mjg.schuler@evc.net

Tourisme 67

Le musée franco-américain du château de Blérancourt, unique musée consacré à des relations entre deux pays, et plus spécifiquement à la France et aux Etats-Unis d’Amérique, est situé à 120 km au nord de Paris et à 15 km de la gare de Noyon.

Construit en 1612 sur les plans du célèbre architecte Salomon de Brosse, le Château de Blérancourt fut la demeure de la riche famille des Potiers de Gesvres, avant démantelement pendant la Révolution. En ruines à la fin du19ème siècle, il est confié en 1917 par l’Armée française à Anne Morgan, fille du fameux banquier et collectionneur américain John-Pierpont Morgan. A la tête d’une association d’aide aux populations des régions sinistrées par la guerre, le Comité pour les Régions Dévastées, elle poursuit jusqu’en 1924 son action humanitaire et participe à la reconstruction de la région Picardie grâce aux missions suivantes : service d’infirmières-visiteuses, ravitaillement, aide à la lecture publique, foyers et jardins d’enfants, scoutisme, sports et fêtes. Grâce à,un parc automobile de Ford-T, les volontaires peuvent ainsi desservir 130 villages à partir de 5 centres établis à Blérancourt, Coucy-le-château, Anizy, Vic-sur-Aisne et Soissons. Au plus près des populations sinistrées, elles participent activement à une reconstruction morale et sociale et apportent la joie de vivre dans une région détruite à 90 % lors du conflit mondial.

Au lendemain de la guerre, Anne Morgan rachète le château (1919), fait restaurer en 1924 les deux pavillons d'angle pour y installer le musée de la coopération franco-américaine, puis en 1930 l'aile nord du Château, suivie par l'aile sud en 1938.

A l’origine dédié à la participation française à la guerre d’Indépendance et surtout à l’aide américaine durant la Première Guerre mondiale, le projet culturel du musée s’est ensuite étendu aux relations artistiques franco-américaines, présentées dans le pavillon Gould construit en 1989 par les architectes Yves Lion et Alan Lewitt.

Le musée fait actuellement l’objet d’un chantier de complète rénovation afin d’augmenter la surface d’exposition et de valoriser les vestiges archéologiques majeurs (maison-forte médiévale) découverts pendant les fouilles réalisées avant travaux.

Réouverture du musée franco-américain de Blérancourt après complète rénovation, automne 2017.

Visites et ateliers pédagogiques :

https://museefrancoamericain.fr/activites-pedagogiques

• Centre de documentation et contact(s)

Bibliothèque franco-américaine : La bibliothèque franco-américaine est consacrée aux relations entre la France et les États-Unis. Située dans le cadre exceptionnel d'un pavillon du XVIIe siècle, elle comprend plus de 6 000 ouvrages.

• Ouverte aux lecteurs sur simple demande écrite.
• Service pédagogique et contact(s)

Catherine Assous Tél : 03 23 39 14 72 mail : catherine.assous@culture.gouv.fr

• Visite gratuite : Uniquement lors des événements nationaux

https://www.coordonnees-gps.fr/communes/blerancourt/2093

Sources : ©Musée franco-américain du Château de Blérancourt