The Vauban Citadel of Arras - a huge 350 year old fortress in North East France

We visited the Vauban Citadel in Arras, France, back in August. Its a huge fortress, situated in the town of Arras in North East France.

The fortress is so large that its actually quite hard to comprehend and take it all in without seeing an aerial picture of it.

I took the pic above in an information room close to the entrance, and it helps to give some perspective. Its a massive pentagonal shaped endeavour, with huge outer defences earth work banks and moats. In the centre it contains barracks for soldiers, etc and a large drill ground.

The pic above shows the concentric defenses from the front entrance - a moat, with earth work ditches, and then a huge defensive wall.

The pic above shows the entrance tunnel under the outer wall - and it is easily 10+ metres long, and that gives you an idea of how large those walls area.

The pic does not show it that well, but up on the wall, which you can walk along, there is tons of space, which would have easily taken thousands of soldiers and equipment (artillery, etc).

The pic above looks across the central drill ground and again helps to show the size - its bloomin huge. A number of these fortifications where built all around France, on the orders of King Louis the 14th, by the military architect Vauban, hence the name. And having looked into the location of the others further, I have seen atleast one other one (at St Vaast in Normandy) and possibly another on the west coast of France at Blaye - without realising they were all related.

The buildings are quite pretty showing their 17th century character with their lovely red bricks.

As can been seen, that style is quite characteristic and it makes for quite a pretty setup. Interestingly, Arras saw a lot of fighting during both World War 1 and World War 2, but ironically the citadel played no part in those directly because of its location on the wrong side of town (!) and hence didnt really help with the defense of Arras at all !

This beautiful chapel above lies on one side of the drill ground and is a memorial to fallen French soldiers.

It was quite quaint and pretty inside.

And had the lovely art work above as a memorial to the first world war soldiers.

While we were there, there was a renaissance fair setup next to the chapel ! We were not quite sure about the occasion, but we had a quick look around.

The old straw cart was pretty cool.

And they had a ton of goats.

There was also a number of craft and food type stalls setup, which were interesting.

We really enjoyed the visit to the citadel, but as said, its so vast, that it is hard to take in from the ground when looking around, but its size and concentric defenses were what also made it quite impressive - even if it never saw any action ! Well worth the look, and free to enter.