What does the word Bastille conjure up for you? Clanking chains? Dank, overcrowded subterranean dungeons? Screams of emaciated prisoners being tortured? A first blow for Liberté-Egalité-Fraternité when the formidable fortress was stormed and taken by the harshly oppressed Parisian populace on July 14 1789 – still celebrated as…Bastille Day?

The Bastille is certainly a relentless mythological icon. Witness: all old Paris bridges across the Seine have steel ringbolts affixed under their arches, used by mariners until the advent of steam to haul barges upstream beneath them. All bridges, that is, except one: the Pont de la Concorde. That span was constructed with stone recycled from the demolished Bastille and its builders intentionally refrained – tough luck for the bargees – from placing there anything even vaguely resembling a restraint.

In fact, the Bastille myth is just that: hooey!

First of all, the “taking of the Bastille” was not exactly a battle royal. Only one of the defenders was killed – he happened to be named “Fortuné.”

And then, on July 14 1789, the “liberators” freed exactly seven detainees from the Bastille: to be sure one was a political prisoner who’d languished there for 30 years, but also four counterfeiters who were immediately re-incarcerated elsewhere, one ”gentleman” convicted of incest, and a madman whose parents had actually paid to have him sheltered in the Bastille. A prison, yes, but with something between four and five stars: the inmates had their own furniture, servants, etc., and their lodgings were more like apartments than cells.

OK, for the non-insane a pleasure palace it wasn’t. Voltaire was held there in 1717 at 23 years of age on account of scurrilous verses he denied having written. Before he was set free, his wrongful imprisonment was rewarded with a pension of one thousand écus. He thanked the king in, substantially, these terms: “I am grateful to Your Royal Highness for having seen to my food, but I would be grateful if You would no longer take charge of my housing.”

In fact, there had never been many prisoners in the Bastille. Something like 40 under the Sun King Louis XIV, 43 under Louis XV and some 19 – whittled down to seven – under Louis XVI. One of them, who died there in 1703, was the Man in the Iron Mask.

No one seems to know – or if someone does know, the information has not been made public – who he was. One conjecture is Louis XIV’s Superintendant of Finances, Fouquet. This ranking official made the major faux pas of building the Vaux le Vicomte manor and gardens near Paris that outshone anything the monarchy could boast at the time, and then inviting the king to a major reception there. The result? Louis XIV grabbed Fouquet’s architect (Le Vau), decorator (Le Brun) and gardener (Le Nôtre) to build… Versailles, and threw the imprudent Supertintendant in jail.

Begun by King Charles V in the mid-14th century, the Bastille was originally intended not as a prison, but to protect the eastern entry of Paris against the Anglo-Burgundian forces in the Hundred Years’ War.

Manpower lacked, and the Prévôt – something like mayor – of Paris, Hugues Aubriot, had recourse to a press-gang system to construct the fortress, whose foundation stone was laid on April 22 1370. This mightily displeased the Parisians, and Aubriot was disgraced; he may even have been the first prisoner in the Bastille.

Contrary to what many visitors imagine, the Bastille was not in the middle of the Place of the same name, but situated near the corner of that Place and the Boulevard Henri IV – check the differentiated paving stone there – and at the beginning of rue St-Antoine, where you can see the outlines of the Bastille’s walls and towers.

At the end of the 16th century, King Henri II had a bastion built on the fortress’s moat, near the center of today’s Place de la Bastille. Since considered outside Paris, it was used as a burial ground for Protestants and Jews.

What remains today of the fortress? Aside from the pavement reminders mentioned above, you can see the base of the fortress’s ironically named Liberté tower at the Square Henri Galli, a mini public garden where Boulevard Henri IV meets the Pont de Sully, and moved there during the construction of the Métro around 1900. There are commemorative plaques on the walls of 3 Place de la Bastille and 5 rue St. Antoine. And if you enter the Bastille Métro station and go to the platform of the Pantin line, you can see some of the ancient masonry.

Napoleon originally thought of placing the Arch of Triumph on the Place de la Bastille, but recanted in favor of 1) L’Etoile for the Arch, and 2) a huge elephant for the Bastille. A mock-up of this imperial beast was built here, where Victor Hugo put the digs of Gavroche in Les Misérables. The pachyderm was never really built, however, and after the “Three Glorious Days” uprising of July 1830, the present “July Column” at the Place de la Bastille’s center was erected.

The remains of 504 1830 Revolutionary victims, hastily interred elsewhere, were re-buried just to the north of the Place, where the canal goes underground. According to my research, they had first been placed where some mummies’ remains brought back from Egypt by Napoleon were kept underground. So the 1830 heroes’ remains under the Bastille are probably mixed with some much older bones!

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^* Paris-based Arthur Gillette guides theme- and period-specific strolls to help visitors discover “Paris Through The Ages.” If interested in taking one, or more, contact him on Armedv@aol.com.