Ten years that turned France upside down, and gave the world the metre
In 1789 the people of France stopped obeying a king. In ten wild years they wrote new rights, changed the clock and the calendar, and sent a queen to the guillotine. Walk through it in Paris and Versailles.
In 1789 France was broke and bread was very expensive. Louis XVI called the Estates-General to Versailles to find money. Instead, the deputies of the common people declared that they were the nation. In July, Parisians took the Bastille. In August, the new Assembly wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Man: people are born free and equal. In 1792 the monarchy ended and France became a republic. Then fear took over. During the Terror, thousands died, among them Queen Marie-Antoinette. In 1794 the Republic abolished slavery in its colonies, after enslaved people in Saint-Domingue rose up. After Robespierre fell, five Directors ruled from 1795. The Revolution also gave us the metre, the kilogram and a song everyone knows: the Marseillaise.
Pick a colour to follow one story. Every moment shows where you can still see it.
In May, the Estates-General meet in Versailles. In June, the deputies of the common people swear in a tennis court not to leave until France has a constitution.
See it at: Royal Tennis CourtOn 14 July, Parisians storm the old prison to find gunpowder. Soon after, it is taken down stone by stone.
See it at: Carnavalet MuseumOn 26 August, the Assembly adopts the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Article 1: men are born and remain free and equal in rights.
See it at: Carnavalet MuseumIn October, thousands of women from the markets of Paris walk to Versailles in the rain to ask for bread. The next day the royal family has to move to Paris.
See it at: Palace of VersaillesRouget de Lisle writes a war song in Strasbourg. Volunteers from Marseille sing it on their way into Paris, so people call it the Marseillaise.
See it at: Arc de TriompheIn August, crowds attack the Tuileries Palace and the king loses his power. In September, France becomes a republic. Louis XVI is executed in January 1793.
The government sees enemies everywhere. Thousands are guillotined, among them Marie-Antoinette, who spends her last weeks in a cell in the Conciergerie.
See it at: ConciergerieIn February, the Republic abolishes slavery in all French colonies. Enslaved people in Saint-Domingue had already risen up for their freedom in 1791.
In July, in the month the new calendar calls Thermidor, Robespierre is arrested. He is guillotined the next day, and the Terror ends.
In April, a law creates the metre and the gram, so the whole country can measure in the same way. In the autumn, five Directors take over France until 1799.
See it at: Musée des Arts et MétiersThe museums and places where this story comes alive.
The museum of the history of Paris has some of the best Revolution rooms in France. Look for the painted Declaration of the Rights of Man, and for dishes decorated with revolutionary slogans.
A medieval palace that became the waiting room of the guillotine. See the prisoners' rooms, the women's courtyard with its fountain, and the chapel built where Marie-Antoinette's cell was.
In the queen's bedroom, look for the small hidden door in the wall. On the night of 6 October 1789, Marie-Antoinette escaped through it when the crowd entered the palace.
It is just a big empty sports hall. That is the magic: modern France was born in a gym. Check the website before you go.
The national archives keep the great papers of France. Among them is Louis XVI's diary, where he wrote one word for 14 July 1789: Rien (nothing). He meant he had not been hunting.
Find out how the metre was made, and see the laboratory of Antoine Lavoisier, the great chemist. The Revolution guillotined him in 1794.
Only seven. The crowd came mostly for the gunpowder stored inside.
Rouget de Lisle wrote it in Strasbourg. It got its name from volunteers from Marseille who sang it in Paris.
Decimal time had 10 hours of 100 minutes. People never got used to it and it was soon dropped.