Bastille Day - Bastille Day Celebrations in Other Countries

Bastille Day Celebrations in Other Countries

• Belgium

• Liège celebrates the Bastille Day each year since the end of the First World War, as Liège was decorated by the Légion d'Honneur for its unexpected resistance during the Battle of Liège.

• Hungary

• Budapest's two-day celebration is sponsored by the Institut de France.

• New Zealand

• The Auckland suburb of Remuera hosts an annual French themed Bastille Day street festival.

• South Africa

• Franschhoek's week-end festival has been celebrated for the last 15 years. (Franschhoek, or 'French Corner,' is situated in the Western Cape.)

• United Kingdom

• London has a large French contingent, and celebrates Bastille Day at various locations including Battersea Park.

• United States

Over 50 U.S. cities conduct annual celebrations

• Baltimore has a large Bastille Day celebration each year at Petit Louis in the Roland Park area of Baltimore City.
• Boston has a celebration annually, hosted by the French Cultural Center for over 35 years. Recently, the celebration took place in The Liberty Hotel, a former city jail converted into a boutique hotel, though more often the festivities occur in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, near the Cultural Center's headquarters. The celebration typically includes francophone musical performers, dancing, and French cuisine.
• Chicago has hosted a variety of Bastille Day celebrations in a number of locations in the city, including Navy Pier and Oz Park. The recent incarnations have been sponsored in part by the Chicago branch of the French-American Chamber of Commerce and by the French Consulate-General in Chicago.
• Houston has a celebration at La Colombe d'Or Hotel. It is hosted by the Consulate General of France in Houston, The French Alliance, the French-American Chamber of Commerce, and the Texan-French Alliance for the Arts.
• Milwaukee's four-day street festival begins with a "Storming of the Bastille" with a 43-foot replica of the Eiffel Tower.
• Minneapolis has a celebration in Uptown with wine, French food, pastries, a flea market, circus performers and bands. Also in the Twin Cities area, the local chapter of the Alliance Française has hosted an annual event for years at varying locations with a competition for the "Best Baguette of the Twin Cities."
• Montgomery, Ohio has a celebration with wine, beer, local restaurants' fare, pastries, games and bands.
• New Orleans has multiple celebrations, the largest in the historic French Quarter.
• New York City has numerous Bastille Day celebrations each July, including Bastille Day on 60th Street hosted by the French Institute Alliance Française between Fifth and Lexington Avenues on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Bastille Day on Smith Street in Brooklyn, and Bastille Day in Tribeca. The Empire State Building is illuminated in blue, white and red.
• Orlando has a boutique Bastille Day street festival that began in 2009 in the Audubon Park Garden District and involves champagne, wine, music, petanque, artists, and street performers.
• Philadelphia's Bastille Day, held at Eastern State Penitentiary, involves Marie Antoinette throwing locally manufactured pastries at the Parisian militia, as well as a re-enactment of the storming of the Bastille.
• San Francisco has a large celebration in the city's historic French Quarter in downtown.
• Seattle's Bastille Day Celebration, held at the Seattle Center, involves performances, picnics, wine and shopping.
• St. Louis has annual festivals in both the Soulard neighborhood and the former French village of Carondelet, Missouri which include reenactments of the beheading of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, as well as reconstructed French fur trading posts.