The key to the Bastille, as held in Mount Vernon's collections. Mount Vernon Ladies' Association President George Washington knew how to curate a blockbuster exhibit—and with just one artifact.

But as France celebrates Bastille Day and the birth of its republic, one of the most potent symbols of the revolution — the main key to the Bastille — hangs in George Washington’s historic ...

“Our very good friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, has intrusted to my care the key of the Bastille, and a drawing handsomely framed representing the demolition of that detestable prison.

to present you with a picture of the Bastille just as it looked a few days after I had ordered its demolition, with the main [key] of that fortress of despotism—it is a tribute which I owe as a ...

Despite its symbolic heft, the key to the Bastille is fairly unremarkable: seven inches of wrought iron with fleur-de-lis teeth. George Washington treasured it. Upon receiving the key in 1790 ...

Bastille Day commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison in 1789, one of the key events of the French Revolution. The day has become a national holiday in France. The European Intervention ...

When the storming of the Bastille occurred, Americans viewed it as the hopeful continuation of their founding ideals, the spark of liberty catching flame across the Atlantic. In fact, the key to ...

This culture of protest dates back to the days of the Revolution, and the storming of the Bastille was the start of it all. Bastille Day, which falls on the 14th of July, celebrates the populist ...

known as Bastille Day to commemorate the 1789 storming of the Bastille prison - a key date in the French Revolution.