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July 14th: What’s planned for France’s Bastille Day celebrations this year?

Last year's celebrations were hampered by the Covid pandemic, but this year you will be able to celebrate la fête nationale in style.

Published: 12 July 2021 10:57 CEST
Updated: 13 July 2021 17:27 CEST
July 14th: What's planned for France's Bastille Day celebrations this year?
Paris's military parade was significantly toned down in 2020. Photo: Lionel BONAVENTURE / AFP.

July 14th is a public holiday in France, commemorating the storming of the Bastille that was the symbolic start of the French Revolution. Here’s what’s planned for the fête nationale this year.

Military parade

The Bastille Day military parade along the Champs-Élysées has been a staple of the fête nationale since 1880, and it will be making a return this year.

The parade was cancelled in 2020 – the first year it hadn’t taken place since the World War II – and was replaced by a smaller ceremony at Place de la Concorde celebrating healthcare workers and others engaged in the fight against Covid.

This time, the spectacle will include 4,300 marching soldiers, 71 planes, 25 helicopters, 221 land vehicles and 200 horses of the Republican Guard. President Emmanuel Macron will be present for the parade, which is set to begin at 10am.

The general public will be allowed to follow proceedings from the Champs-Elysées, while 25,000 people will be able to watch from the seated stands, according to AFP.

Spectators will be required to show a health pass – with proof of vaccination, a recent negative test, or proof they have recovered from Covid – and will also have to wear a mask.

Numbers will be limited, but it is not possible to register for a standing place in advance, so you may need to arrive early to be sure of a place.

As part of the security measures vehicles will be denied access to a large area around the Champs-Elysées.

A number of metro stations will also be closed to the public during the day. These are: Tuileries, Concorde, Champs-Elysées Clémenceau, Franklin D.Roosevelt, Georges V, and Charles de Gaulle Etoile.

Air show

Some of the best views of the airshow, which will paint the sky the colours of the French flag at 10.30am, are to be had from the Grande Arche de la Défense. The rooftop of the Grande Arche will be open to the public and offers stunning views over the Champs-Elysées.

The same location was also set to host DJ sets from the Doppelgänger brothers and Bob Sinclair in the evening, but these have been cancelled due to the spread of Covid in the Paris region.

Champs-de-Mars concert

For the ninth consecutive year, celebrations will continue with a classical music concert on the Champ-de-Mars at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

The concert will feature the Orchestre national de France, the Chœur and the Maîtrise de Radio France, and will be broadcast live from 9pm on France Inter and France 2.

There is no need to register – anybody is free to turn up at the Champs-de-Mars and follow the concert, but you are invited to arrive 45 minutes early to allow time for security checks.

READ ALSO France’s biggest celebration: What you need to know about Bastille Day

Last year, the concert took place with a virtual audience only.

For the first time this year, the Fip radio station will also be organising a “before show” on the Champs de Mars – a 45-minute DJ set which will begin at 7:30pm.

Fireworks

Of course, no July 14th would be complete without the traditional fireworks display. Last year, crowds were banned from gathering to watch the spectacle, but this year, locals and visitors are invited to follow along from Paris’s parks.

Several towns including Lille have decided to cancel the fireworks, amid fears over the spread of the delta variant of Covid. On Sunday, local authorities in Paris confirmed the show would be going ahead, but warned that spectators will have to wear a mask while gathering on the Champ-de-Mars.

“Place du Trocadéro is the best place to witness the pyrotechnics,” the local tourism office advises.

Similar displays will illuminate the sky in towns all across France, but beware – certain local councils will require attendees to show a health pass, with an up-to-date negative Covid test or vaccination certificate, so be sure to look up the local restrictions before heading out.

No firemen’s balls

One of the most cherished Bastille Day traditions is the bals de pompiers, or parties in fire stations.

These are not explicitly banned this year, but in the context of the health situation, many areas have decided not to stage them.

Cities including Paris, Nantes and Strasbourg have cancelled for the second year in a row, but other areas may still be holding scaled down social events.

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FRENCH HISTORY

7 wild stories from the Liberation of Paris

Eighty years ago Parisians rose up against their German Nazi occupiers, liberating the French capital on August 25th, 1944 after a wild week of strikes, barricades and street fighting.

Published: 14 August 2024 10:17 CEST
7 wild stories from the Liberation of Paris

The liberation of the city is formally commemorated on August 25th with parades, speeches and wreath-laying – but the uprising against the Nazi occupiers began several days earlier, starting with a strike.

READ ALSO The bloody and chaotic weeks that led to the liberation of Paris

Here’s a look at some key moments from these dramatic days, some tragic, others more joyful.

Shot in 1944, died in 2005

On the morning of August 19th, Parisians first rose up. The police, who had been on strike for four days, reoccupied their HQ.

Police officer Armand Bacquer, 24, was arrested by the Germans and shot by a firing squad with a colleague on the banks of the river Seine.

While his colleague died on the spot, Bacquer, left for dead, was rescued the next day. He was operated on, survived and resumed his job as a police officer. He died in his sleep more than 60 years later in 2005.

Champagne in the park

On August 19th, Madeleine Riffaut who had been arrested, tortured and sentenced to death by the Nazis after killing a junior Nazi officer, was freed.

She was then sent on a mission to intercept a German train as it passed through the Buttes Chaumont park in northeastern Paris. With three comrades she pounded the train with explosives from a bridge over a tunnel, captured 80 German soldiers and then partied on the Champagne and foie gras the Germans were taking home.

“Let us say, we celebrated on that day: it was August 23rd. I was 20,” she said.

Aux barricades

On August 22nd, Parisians responded to the call of resistance leader Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy to go “To the barricades!”

The Parisians, determined to take part in their own liberation, erected a chain of 600 barricades, including paving stones, rails, bathtubs, mattresses, and trees, to block the Germans’ movement.

Sleepless night

“It was only on the evening (of August 24th) around 9:45 pm that the news broke across Paris: at 9:28 pm the first French tank, the Romilly, arrived at the town hall. Everywhere there was an indescribable emotion,” wrote Jean Le Quiller, journalist for the newly-created Agence France- Presse.

“Whole apartment blocks sang the Marseillaise, whole streets applauded in the night… A concert of bells filled the air… bringing tears to the eyes,” he wrote.

As allied troops entered from different sides of Paris, AFP wrote: “Now it is for sure: they are there. Paris will not sleep tonight.”

The next day Colonel Rol-Tanguy accepted the surrender of German General Dietrich von Choltitz, ending four years of occupation.

School battle

On August 25th, Brigadier Pierre Deville, who had just returned from Morocco, called his parents and said: “I’m on my way.”

With his platoon he went to the military school to the west of Paris where the Germans were holed up. It took nearly four hours to neutralise them.

Deville was then shot in the head. It was his 20th birthday.

Fireman’s revenge

On the same day, not far away, fireman Captain Sarniguet climbed the 1,700 steps of the Eiffel Tower.

It was sweet revenge for the man the Nazis had ordered in June 1940 to take down France’s tricolour flag from the top. He put up French flags, cobbled together with low quality dyes and sown in secret by the wives of junior officers.

So the French flag replaced the swastika which had been flying for about 1,500 days. “The only obstacle I met was the wind,” Sarniguet said.

Shooting at de Gaulle

On August 26th, French wartime leader General Charles de Gaulle made a triumphant return from exile in London, parading in liberated Paris. He arrived late for a prayer of praise at Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral.

As he greeted the crowd in the square from an open-topped car, gunfire broke out. He brushed it off and carried on his way. He put it down to a coup by counter-revolutionaries seeking to sow panic and seize power.

The underground bunker from which Resistance leader Colonel Rol-Tanguy directed the battle for the liberation of Paris is now a museum – the Musée de la Libération Leclerc Moulin – which is highly recommended to anyone interested in French history of this period. 

Why you really should visit France’s WWII resistance museum

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