Which Paris field hosted the Fête de la Fédération in 1790?

The Fête de la Fédération in 1790 was held on Paris’s Champ de Mars.

The festival took place on 14 July 1790, the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. It was designed to celebrate national unity during the early French Revolution, when France was moving toward constitutional monarchy. The Champ de Mars, then a large military training field beside the École Militaire, was transformed into an enormous ceremonial arena.

Thousands of volunteers helped complete the earthworks in time, an effort remembered as the “Day of the Wheelbarrows.” An altar of the nation stood at the center, while Lafayette, Louis XVI, and representatives from France’s departments took constitutional oaths. Talleyrand celebrated the mass.

A common mix-up is confusing this event with the storming of the Bastille itself, which occurred in 1789 at the Bastille fortress. Another later event at the same location was the Champ de Mars massacre of 17 July 1791.