In 1558 Calais was captured by the French who built the Citadel to replace the old English castle and administrative buildings. Warfare had changed in the three hundred years since the original castle was built and the new fortress was far more suitable for artillery and gunpowder weapons.
Visiting Calais Citadel
The citadel at Calais is free to enter and is open during daylight hours. There is a large sports complex inside now and almost nothing remains of the citadel other than the massive walls and moat, the interior building having all been finally destroyed in the German capture of the citadel in 1940.
I visited on a sunny February afternoon in 2025 and there were several joggers running the circuit of the ramparts and families walking around the interior so it was a safe place to visit. I didn’t notice any information boards, other than on the Neptune Gate and the path to it from Esplanade Jacques Vendroux, where there were several detailing the 1940 and 1944 events. Calais Citadel is a big fortress so I’d allow a good 30 mins to walk the walls.
My Experience
I visited the citadel at Calais at the end of my weekend road trip through Belgium, detailed in my travel blog here. It was a nice walk through the town to get to the Neptune Gate and it was nice to see that the area was free of litter and graffiti. There are memorial boards to the French defenders of the citadel in 1940 and also the resistance members executed by the Germans in 1944 as you walk down to the bridge.
I crossed the bridge into the citadel itself and then was when you first get an idea of the size, it really is a huge enclosure. There are steps up on to the battlements at various points and I crossed the central area to climb up the steps opposite. The embankment is very wide and you get a good view of the town and also the defensive moat as you walk. The western moat has gone now but there is an emplacement for one of the German railway guns that can be seen from the battlements.
There isn’t a huge amount to see, other than the massively thick walls and embankments, from the inside as all the interior buildings were destroyed in 1940 and then the sports complex was built in the 1960s. Maybe a walk around the outer perimeter, looking across the moat, would have been better!
Calais Citadel Photo Gallery
History
The citadel contains remains of the ramparts of medieval Calais, besieged by the English in 1346-1347. They are visible after the Porte de Boulogne, one of the access gates to the citadel. The car park runs along the old ramparts, and nothing remains of the XNUMXth century fortified castle.
Around the castle, there was a district of Calais, protected by the walls. There were bourgeois residences, a church, a palace (the Exchequer) of the English government. When France took back Calais in 1558, the district lost its civil character. After 211 years of English presence, King Francois II wanted to arm Calais with a fortress with its garrison. The castle and the surrounding district were destroyed at the end of the XNUMXth century. War techniques changed following the development of artillery. This was the era of bastion fortifications. The illustrious engineer Vauban had some developments and works carried out.
For several centuries, the citadel housed the garrison of Calais. The last feat of arms was the 36-hour resistance of the men of the citadel against the strong German attack of May 1940.
The Germans settled in the citadel during the Occupation. Like the district and the port, it was heavily bombed during the war, until the German surrender in September 1944.
After the war, the citadel lost its military role and was transformed into a place for walking and sports in the 1960s. It was in this decade that the Stade du Souvenir was inaugurated, that of the local Resistance fighters detained, tortured and some of whom died in these places.
References
The Wiki page here has a good overview of the history of the citadel.
The abridged history above is copies from the Calais Tourism site here.
There are some nice old photos of the citadel here, on the Dunkirk 1940 site.