The Bastille Day military parade has been held in Paris almost every year since 1880. That year, the Third Republic made 14 July France’s national celebration and formally linked the holiday with a military procession.
The parade’s origins reach back to the Fête de la Fédération of 14 July 1790, held one year after the Bastille was stormed. However, the modern annual tradition belongs to the early Third Republic. A law adopted in June 1880 established 14 July as the national holiday, and a decree in July connected it with a military parade.
From 1880 until the First World War, the event was staged at the Longchamp Racecourse in the Bois de Boulogne. After the war, the parade moved to the Champs-Élysées; the 1919 procession was a major victory parade marking the end of the First World War, not the beginning of the tradition. Today, troops usually march from the Arc de Triomphe toward Place de la Concorde, with aircraft flying overhead.