Citadel outer works
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
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Transcript
The Citadel rises more than a hundred metres above the old town and occupies the narrow southern neck of the Doubs loop.
French conquest in 1674 made this position urgent. Louis XIV had acquired a strategically exposed eastern province.
Vauban had drawn plans connected with Besançon even before final French control and then developed the defensive system after conquest.
Construction transformed the hill into terraces, bastions, walls and controlled approaches designed to exploit terrain.
UNESCO describes Vauban's work as the peak of classical bastioned fortification: a rational system that integrated geometry, landscape, engineering and military organisation.
Do not reduce that to star-shaped walls.
The key principle is overlapping defence. Attackers should be visible to several positions, while walls and earthworks reduce blind spots and absorb artillery.
Fortification is applied mathematics with very unpleasant consequences for anyone testing it.
Vauban also thought about logistics: barracks, stores, wells and movement. A fortress that cannot feed its soldiers is an expensive sculpture.
The Citadel became operational in the 1680s and later served as barracks, prison and military institution.
Our next stop is inside the Citadel, where the fortress's later use as prison and wartime execution site complicates the admiration due to its engineering.
A beautiful defensive system can be used by ugly regimes.