High on a rocky spur that a great loop of the river Doubs almost turns into an island, the Citadel of Besançon commands the old capital of the Franche-Comté in eastern France. Built by the greatest military engineer of the age of Louis XIV, it is one of the finest and best-preserved fortresses of its kind—and today one of the region’s most visited monuments. From its ramparts the view sweeps over the tiled roofs of the old town enclosed within the river’s bend, a defensive geography so perfect that the Romans fortified the same spur nearly two thousand years earlier.
After the Franche-Comté passed to France, King Louis XIV appointed his celebrated military architect, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, to fortify Besançon. Work began around 1668 and continued for some three decades, producing the layered walls, bastions and gates that crown Mount Saint-Étienne. The citadel is a textbook example of Vauban’s art of adapting powerful geometric defenses to difficult terrain.
