Citadel of Longwy

En un regard

Le château en bref

Perched on a plateau overlooking the Chiers valley, the upper town of Longwy is one of the few strongholds that Vauban designed entirely from scratch. After Longwy was annexed to France by the Treaty of Nijmegen, the old feudal castle was razed and, from 1679 to 1690, a new fortified town on a hexagonal plan was laid out with the engineer Choisy: bastions, demi-lunes, gates, and a regular urban grid arranged around a vast parade ground bringing together the church, town hall, barracks and arsenal. The stronghold endured the sieges of 1792, 1815, 1870 and 1914, then bombing in 1944. A little over half of the enceinte survives today, along with the Porte de France, the cross-shaped casemate, the powder magazine, the military bakery and the siege well, 60 metres deep, the only survivor of the five wells originally dug. Inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2008 as part of the Fortifications of Vauban, the upper town can be explored on a circuit of about 3.6 km starting from the tourist office.