Losing Your Head

Back in 1889, many countries — Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, and Sweden — RSVP’d with a hard pass to their invitation to the Universal Exposition in France that year.

Being monarchies, they didn’t want to participate in a world’s fair celebrating the anniversary of separating royals from their heads.

That didn’t deter France from constructing a replica of the infamous Bastille prison for the Expo.

The reconstruction incorporated the fortress’s exterior walls and towers, giving a sense of the actual prison’s intimidating mass, triggering an emotional and immersive immediacy for ordinary visitors. Once they were inside, visitors were treated to a dank labyrinth of dungeons, instruments of torture, and at designated times, the staged drama of a prisoner's escape from the notorious lockup that was stormed on July 14, 1789.