Citadelle d'Arras

Built to Vauban's plans between 1668 and 1672 on the orders of Louis XIV. Its initial role was to protect the town against enemy invasion (from the Spanish Netherlands), but its far from strategic position soon earned it the nickname "la Belle Inutile" (the beautiful useless one). The citadel contains the oldest chapel in the town, the seventeenth-century Saint-Louis chapel, built in 1673 of brick and stone and restored under Napoleon III in 1866–1867. The enclosure also holds the Wall of the Shot, commemorating the 1939–1945 war, with 218 plaques bearing the names of the victims.

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